Throwback Thursday: The Homemade Valentine’s Day Card

I was 12 years old when I met her; it was the end of grade 6 and she came during the last month of the school year. I remember we ended up celebrating her birthday in class on June 15th because we missed her birthday in January. 

I believe we were in grade 8 when I bullied her, for God knows what reason. Somehow though, she ended up being one of the more loyal friends that I had growing up. 

In the first semester of our first year in high school, she didn't hesitate to talk to me in the library or during English or Religion class. By the second semester, she was the one who called me over to sit with her in French class. So despite the elementary school bullying, you could say we both looked past that weird phase in my life. She introduced me to a few people that I later considered to be my best friends in high school, and at the end of the day, she was and would always be there for me when I needed her.

We weren’t best friends, but we were close enough. She was someone that I considered a “true” friend because after ten years from the day we first met, it never really mattered how often we talked, I knew I could tell her anything without being judged and I could always count on her advice and opinions as being the most considerate and altruistically offered.   

Nowadays, we rarely talk, but when we do keep in touch, our friendship’s just picked up from where it left off last.

So where exactly am I going with this?

Well, this blog post is titled the Homemade Valentine's Day Card for a reason...

Let's go back a few steps, shall we?

In elementary school, it’s just tradition to give out valentine’s cards to the kids in your class and that has always just been the way she goes. Once you start high school, those traditions stop and I guess it’s because we all just start feeling too cool for that stuff. Well, when I was in grade 9, I remember Valentine’s Day was just like any other day.

It was second semester and at our third period French class with Mme. Nunez, she showed up with a couple of little handmade Valentine’s Day cards. It was literally the cutest thing that anyone could have expected that day. She handed them out to her friends, including me and it was just a really sweet gesture altogether.

Before that point, I never gave too many shits about handmade crafts or anything like that (realistically, even after that point, I still didn’t give too many shits about handmade crafts), but I never forgot about that card. It was a small thing, made out of a little piece of red construction paper with a cut out heart and a ribbon thingy on it that read "Happy Valentine's Day Czar" in blue pen ink. I thought it was nice, so I put it up on my mirror and that started my collection of other paper things that I got from my friends during high school. From that point, my mirror ended up being my “Handmade by my friends” sanctuary until I had my son and dressed up my room to look a little more like a nursery and a little less like a teenager’s dungeon.

7 months pregnant at my Surprise "BBQ" Baby Shower

While I was pregnant with my son, I had a lot of time to think about how I wanted to raise him. She helped me come up with a few key things I wanted to make sure I did. During my second and last trimester of pregnancy, we were in our second semester of grade 11 and the two of us had first period Interior Design, third period lunch and fourth period Chemistry together. Sometime during this semester she helped me pick out my son's middle name and was probably one of the most tolerable people I came to appreciate during my hormonal episodes of "I hate everyone!"
I remember bringing up the whole handmade valentine's card thing to her again and she told me that it wasn't like it was anything special, but her and her mom used to do stuff like that when she was younger so it was something she enjoyed doing. Whether it turned out to be a product of impeccable artistic composition or not, it was something and she simply enjoyed making little things like that. So whether or not people like me cared, she made them anyway.

I was compelled to believe that making little cards and gifts with my son when he got older would be one of the more important activities that we did together. 

And it was. 

It ended up being a bonding activity between my son and I because even when he was only 6 months old, I still talked to him during these crafts as if he was really taking part in it. By the time he was physically capable of helping me with these little crafts, he loved it. It's really shaping the way that he is now and he loves doing little artistic crafts on his own time without my initiative to start a project.

Something really stuck with me just from that one Valentine’s Day card from way back when I was 14 years old. The concept that someone genuinely gave a damn to put an effort into making something for you... it just gives you the warm fuzzies, you know?

It didn't have to be perfect, it just had to come from the heart and that meant a lot. That made it beautiful.

Making things by hand with my son stemmed from that gesture alone and the more I worked on hand made things with my son, the better I got at it. My creativity branched off from there – as I’ve always been artistic – but this really took me into the whole world of fine paperie crafts and typography.

For anyone that’s ever received a handmade card from either my son or myself in the past (and enjoyed receiving one), I guess you know now why I bothered with a handmade card in the first place, instead of buying you one and signing it with pretty handwriting. Whether it gets tossed in the garbage or gets placed on your mantle, stuck onto your fridge or kept in a memory box, we made it for you because it's the first moments of receiving it, reading it, and just taking in the effort that was taken to make it that really sticks with you. After that point, it's just a couple pieces of paper glued together with pretty writing, but even if there's only a second of your time for it, there is at least that very second that you felt the warm fuzzy feeling just because someone made it for you.

You hear and read a lot of things that emphasize that “it’s the little things that count.” I guess it’s because the thought and effort put into simple things – the little things – are what make them that much bigger to appreciate and really enjoy.

So if it wasn't for that little handmade Valentine’s Day card that I got in high school when no one else could have bothered with Valentine’s Day at all, I may not have gained an appreciation for all those little handmade things that makes your day just a little bit better. I may not have started my business, and many of you may not have enjoyed some of the silly little things that my son and I have made for you in the past that I know many of you have come to enjoy.

Here’s to a good friend with a great heart!