Valentine's Day Tony Style and a Newly Minted 8 Year Old

For Valentine's Day, a few of my kids were asked to take shoeboxes and create a receptacles for their in-class valentines.  Over the years we have had some exceptionally creative ones come from the boys in the family.  I wish I had a picture of the one Sam did a few years ago.  He cut a big hole in the top and attached a flexible dryer vent and painted the whole thing red and silver.  It looked like a valentine vacuum.

I do, however have a picture to share of Tony's.  He asked for a shoebox, banged around for awhile looking for supplies and a hot glue gun, and then came back an hour or so later with this:

The detail is difficult to see, but there is a pink tongue at the bottom and blood-tinged teeth all around.  Seriously, the kid is 9 and does WAY better crafts than I do.  He found all the supplies, figured out how to glue the lid so that it stayed open, and only suffered a minor finger burn from a drip of the glue gun. The result was a tie for the cutest valentine box I have ever seen come out of our family.

The girls' boxes have been nice too, don't get me wrong.  Hearts, flowers, love, lace, etc.  Just a tad more predictable.

Speaking of the girls, we have a new 8 year old in the family!  Bella successfully completed her 8th year of life yesterday.  Yay Bella!  If you can recall that far back, I posted a photo of her each month during her first year...seems I had more time back then!  Anyway, check out 2007 blogs for her first year progression if you are interested.  Here she is at 8 years:

Time does fly.  Happy birthday, Bella, and I look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with you!