My kids love to decorate the house for every holiday. I have to reign them back in many times and remind them that we live on a budget and must come up with our own ideas for decorating (ideas that don't cost lots of money). While some things do cost money, we need not go overboard.

Here are TEN ideas we came up with this year for Valentine's Day...

Side window: We found decals at The Dollar Store.

Front door window:

Back sliders: I folder paper in half and my daughter cut out the heart shapes with her child-safe scissors (great fine motor skill practice). As you can see she went a little crazy with the cutting but she had a blast.

We found a V-day tablecloth at Wal-mart for $3.88:

Melty bead hearts for window decor: We purchase our beads from Klutz where they also offer LARGE melty beads for younger children. I love the large ones for tiny fingers and small children who get frustrated when they can't work with the small beads yet. This is a cost-effective craft if you take into account the amount of beads you get and the hours upon hours of fun that the kids have, over time (making different shapes).

We taped our left-over candy canes together in order to make heart shapes:

We decorated a Valentine's Day tree for a total of about $10. Read the details here.

Every year I purchase "goodie bags" from Little Journey's World. They are affordable, re-usable and my kids love waking up to find their bags hanging from the bedroom doorknob full of small treats & bubbles, etc. I give my eldest son (13) a few treats along with a $5 bill. He likes the cash.

Paper hearts: Courtney (our nanny) worked with our daughter to create hearts from left-over paper scraps (left over from making books through my PCS business). They folded two strips in half and taped them together to make hearts.

Heart crayons by trial and error: Read the directions here.

That's all folks. Happy Valentine's Day!