Image courtesy of google

New England Confectionary Company, or NECCO, is the creator of conversation hearts. I don't know about there, but around here nothing says it is Valentine's Day like these sweet hearts showing up in the store aisles. My kids are crazy for them (believe me, I know it is because they are 100% sugar) and so we have had a box here and there already.

I noticed that Home and Garden.CraftGossip did a post with 9 Conversation Heart Crafts. My favorite was the Valentine wreath, but I am willing to try any of them to add to my holiday decor (and save my children's teeth!).

Happy Valentine's Day!

"To make a perfect heart you take a sheet / of red construction paper..."

"A Perfect Heart"

To make a perfect heart you take a sheet
of red construction paper of the type
that's rough as a cat's tongue, fold it once,
and crease it really hard, so it feels
as if your thumb might light up like a match,

then you choose your scissors from the box. I like
those safety scissors with the sticky blades
and the rubber grips that pinch a little skin
as you snip along. They make you careful,
just as you should be, cutting out a heart

for someone you love. Don't worry that your curve
won't make a valentine; it will. Rely
on chewing on your lip and symmetry
to guide your hand along with special art.
And there it is at last: a heart, a heart!

by Ted Kooser (published in his collection, Valentines)


{image via cafemom}

Love is not all

image courtesy of .bobby on Flickr

A student once asked my why so many famous American writers have three names: Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman ... and so on. Because I'm rich with knowledge of all things literary, I answered, "I don't know."

But I do know that the best and most romantic three-name name in American literature is Edna St. Vincent Millay. So regal and romantic. So dreamy and literary. A name made for a writer.

As February approaches and my children struggle to decide which cartoon character will deliver their messages of love and friendship, I've been thinking about more earnest ways to express devotion. And I remembered this Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet, one of my favorite poems ever, which seemed to fit just right with a striking image (posted above) that I recently came across on Flickr.

And Millay was born in February, so here's homage to the first American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and some inspiration for Valentine's Day.

Love is Not All
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.