I Love You to the Moon and Back

Every year for Valentine's Day we try to have a homemade theme for Oliver's gift. When he was a baby I made him a little stuffed heart with his initial, last year we got him silicone squeeze pop molds so we could make him healthy smoothie pops all year round. This year he's getting a small toy and a big tub of air dry clay so we could make stuff together.

We broke the tub of clay out early because part of his gift was to make stuff together for the holiday. We did a lot of playing around and Oliver made some abstract sculptures and I taught him how to make a snowman by rolling clay balls. Eventually we settled in and together we made two moons. He rolled a ball and I helped him press it into a disc and did the same with mine. We used the fingerprints as natural mountains and valleys and use the end of pen to make craters. I think making craters was Oliver's favorite part. We let them dry for a couple of days.

Ollie didn't want to paint his moon, he told me it was a moon cookie. I let him play with it and he broke it in like two minutes. Lesson learned - air dry clay is not strong enough to stand up to rambunctous toddlers.

I painted mine with prismacolor markers in shades of gray on the front. The directions said that the clay could be painted with watercolors, and I thought markers would be similar but less mess. I think it came out cute (totally inaccurate, but cute).

On the back, since it's a Valentine, I wrote "I love you to the moon and back" in marker. I also (obviously) put a string through both so they could be hung up somewhere. They kind of look like ornaments, so I wouldn't be surprised if next year they end up on the Christmas tree...

I actually like the two together, the colored version and the raw version of Oliver's - glued crack and all. I think they make a fitting pair.