valentine tree

i promised to post the other valentine's day decoration today, so here goes...

i was sad that there was a large empty space in our house where the christmas tree was, so i decided to put a valentine's day tree together. i loaded a bundled baby into the hiking backpack and hunted around in the woodsy area next to our house to find the branches. i had a large vase in the basement left over from a huge flower arrangement from several years ago (i knew it would come in handy someday!), so i filled it with rocks and arranged the branches into the tree.

 

i put the ornaments together in the morning...some red ornaments from the christmas decorations, a glittery heart i got when i was a hallmark employee in high school, and several ornaments that i made.

 in the front of the arrangement LOVE is spelled out with ornaments i made from buttons, scrabble tiles, pipe cleaners, and ribbon. i wrapped red ribbon around the pipe cleaner (it was brown), trimmed the pipe cleaner to the size i needed, put it through the holes in the button and glued the scrabble tile onto it.

the garland was a very quick project. i simply threaded a needle with white yarn, and sewed through some pom poms, and red, pink, and white buttons.

i had some left over candy-cane pipecleaners that i had been planning on using as gift decorations but didn't. they were in the shape of candycanes, but i just bent them into heart shapes and hung them on branches. 

the snowflakes are from a thrift store...i found a bag of them a while back and have used them for several different projects. the following photo shows one of the ornaments i made from the watercolor hearts i made yesterday. i used glue dots to give it a 3-D effect and taped some ribbon on the back.

the valentine's tree is the perfect decoration for our living room. i love how it turned out! how do you decorate for valentine's day?