Vintage Valentine Heart Boxes for Kid Gifts–Make Valentine’s Day Morning Special!

Every January, like clockwork, I hate on Valentine’s Day a bit. “It’s a dumb holiday. So commercialized. I’m boycotting this year.” I don’t know why I’m so hateful about a holiday dedicated to love. But then February rolls around and, like clockwork, I get swept up in how cute it all is. And it is! There are so many sweet elements. So many little reasons to celebrate.

Last year, I saw a Martha Stewart article where she took heart-shaped boxes and stuffed them full of themed treats for all her loved ones and I LOVED the idea. You have to make sure all the treats are pretty flat in order to fit in the boxes and let’s just say: Challenge Accepted.

I’m excited to start a little family tradition with these! Every Valentine’s Day morning, each kid’s heart-shaped box will be stuffed with fun, personalized treats and candy. I plan to put them where they sit at the breakfast table so it’s a nice surprise first thing in the morning. We’ll save the boxes and use them year after year this way. I wonder what I’ll stuff them with when they’re teens? Gift cards and, like, concerts tickets or something? Think Hank would want to go to a concert with his ol’ Mom? He should be so lucky.

Pro tip: Don’t even bother going to your local grocery store for a beautiful heart-shaped chocolate box. They don’t exist anymore. At least, the high quality ones with satin or crushed velvet on the lid do not exist anymore. Which is sad and depressing and we’re just supposed to accept the new normal that Russell Stover is mass producing now, which is cheap thin cardboard covered in red cellophane with their unremovable logo on top. Shame on you, Russell Stover. You have one thing a year to get right…

However! You can snag some old school heart-shaped chocolate boxes on Ebay for a steal, which is exactly what I did. I scored both boxes for around $10 each and they arrived in perfect condition. I have big plans to decorate the lids in the future, adding pins or brooches on top. I’m already on the hunt for brooches with the kids’ initials.

I cut out foil for the bottom so the “sweat” from the candy or treats wouldn’t leave marks. Then came the fun part: Treat hunting.

My favorite places for stocking stuffers and other small treats are: World Market, Hobby Lobby, and Cracker Barrel. Don’t even get me going on new-but-inspired-by-vintage treats at Cracker Barrel. Their ‘old timey General Store’ aesthetic makes me absolutely weak in the knees. Don’t tell anyone, but I regularly go there to browse and eat alone— I love it that much. Also, Cracker Barrel makes such a good pit stop on long road trips because they always have clean bathrooms, delicious food, and long porches for kids to run off pent up car energy. Seriously, is there anything Cracker Barrel can’t do?

Most of the treats you see in this year’s kid boxes are from World Market, my other go-to. Fiona loves art supplies, so she’s getting: rainbow and balloon animal erasers, multi-color pen (she’ll lose her mind over that), a new personalized mask (Hello, 2021!), candy, chocolate, and bunny-shaped bubbles. Hank’s obsessed with matchbox cars, so he’ll get: the “tiniest” Hot Wheels car ever, a regular Hot Wheels car, dinosaur flickers, frog shaped-bubbles, candy, chocolate, and a gummy pizza because Hank. Loves. Pizza.

I’m not sure how an innocent post about heart-shaped boxes turned into a hot and bothered love letter to Cracker Barrel, but here we are.

XOXO, Friis

P.S. Cracker Barrel did not sponsor this post. 🙂