Happy February OSSS readers! It’s Brooke from Blissful Roots with you today. I love being here every month, but February is one of my very favorite months to be here! There are always so many fun ways to show a bit of extra love to those we love during this month of love.
I heard about a garage door heart attack many years ago from Alisa Bangerter on Studio 5 (a local lifestyle show here in Utah). She had a whole list of fun valentine activities for the family. This particular activity really caught my attention because it was like nothing I’d ever tried before. I had done a heart attack on a front door and bedroom door before, but never hanging from a garage door. I did it for my husband that Valentine’s Day, and it was a big success! This is the perfect activity to do for husbands/dads on Valentine’s Day because they’re usually the ones coming home at the end of the day, and opening the garage. And when they do, they’re greeted with a cheery assortment of dangling hearts with love messages on them. So fun!!
All you’ll need are some cut out hearts with fun love messages written on them, writing utensils, tape, string, and a garage door (one that can be opened from a remote in the car).
Once you and/or your kids have filled all your hearts with love notes for dad, then you’ll need to attach a piece of string/yarn to the back of each heart, like in the picture above. If you want, you can attach two hearts to one piece of string so there are love messages on both sides.
Next, you’ll need to attach the stings with the hearts to the bottom of your garage door, like so. I made the strings fairly long because when the hearts go up with the garage door, they’re pretty high up in the air. If you want dad to be able to read the love notes, they need to hang down a bit. You can measure different lengths of string to your liking. You can also attach hearts all along the length of your garage door, or just a few in the middle. And, DO NOT attach the hearts to your garage door until you know dad will be coming home. Once the garage door is opened, the surprise is over, and it’s pretty much impossible to get the hearts back inside the garage.
I had the hardest time getting a good picture of the final result (hence the picture of the hearts on the white background at the beginning of this post), but hopefully this will give you a bit of an idea. This picture was taken from standing inside the garage looking out. The idea is to have a bunch of hanging hearts go up with the garage door as dad opens it upon his arrival home on Valentine’s Day. It’s such a simple, unexpected way to show dad (or your husband) a little bit of extra love on Valentine’s Day.
I wish you all a wonderful Valentine’s Day, and hope you take the time to express your love to those who mean the most to you. I have a fun printable Valentine tic-tac-toe to share this month (perfect for any class parties you may be helping out with), my favorite Kneader’s sugar cookie recipe (the heart version for this month), and one of my most popular crafts of all time at Blissful Roots, my upcycled tin cans– the valentine edition. Oh, and I can’t forget my Valentine playlist! Holidays just aren’t holidays without music at our house.