We’re All Heart: Find Free Valentines Here

This year, make it personal with downloadable and DIY valentine cards to give—and eat. (FREE, PRINTABLE VALENTINES + RECIPE)

FREE & EASY | Lucky in location, I live in one of several provinces in Canada that celebrates Family Day, a statutory holiday dedicated to promoting family life, on the second Monday in February rather than the third as some other provinces do. Having an extra day off just before Valentine’s Day means my kids and I have more time to make valentine cards to hand out at school and the heart-shaped cookie notes we share with one another.

Free Love—Valentine Style

With so many free, easy-to-assemble valentine cards for kids online, it feels sinful to opt for store-bought versions. This year, a lot of them come with add-ons, mostly sugary. Of this type, I love the one above from danamadeit.com (CLICK HERE for fabulous looking directions), though I intend to hand-sew mine with yarn rather than use staples.

While they do cost $5 to download, I also love this set of Swedish fish-inspired cards from PBJ and J (CLICK HERE to check them out on Esty).

If time is not an issue, consider making these adorable cheerleader cards, each with its own pompon bookmark from seejaneblog.com.

Free quick-make cards abound on the web. We heart the old-school-look ones from hellolucky.com directly above and getbuttonedup.com below it.

Probably more suited to those in middle school and up, this free card with envelope from dailysuze.com is very sweet. I found it on thedatingdivas.com, which has links to an astounding 140 attractive, printable valentines.

Eat Your Heart Out

For our immediate family, we make valentine cookies with simple notes to one another. Depending on how much time we have, we’ve been known to write our messages using those tubes of coloured, premade frosting from the grocery store. Our current favourite recipe for sugar cookies is from Saveur magazine. (Visit saveur.com and then search for “classic sugar cookie.”) —Andrea Bell