My Punny Valentine - College Care Package

Our congregation has a program where families can adopt a college student for the school year.  We are asked to encourage them throughout the year with prayers, cards, care packages, messages on social media--generally whatever we are comfortable with.

We adopted a young man whom we have known for a long time who is a senior.  With Valentine's Day approaching, I thought we could send him a little care package, ya know, "show the love". :)
When I started looking for valentine ideas for guys, all I seemed to find were gifts and cards for a boyfriend or hubby.  That was just a little too romantic for what we were aiming for, and anything funny seemed inappropriate as well.  I also wanted to send some practical items along with some of his favorites and of course, something silly.

As is tradition now at our house, valentines must be punny.
So, I did some googling, and walked through a store or two, and came up with the following list of punny phrases and items.
Using my Silhouette Cameo, I cut out hearts and hand-wrote the notes on each one.  Maybe when I have more time and experience, I will do this with the print and cut features of the Cameo, but I kinda like the handwritten part.

THE LIST:
You have been o-fish-ally heart-attacked! (Goldfish) 
We wheelie like you! (Hot Wheels in school colors)
You are all write in our book! (pen)
You are looking sharp! (Sharpies)
For nacho average guy (Doritos)

Yoda best! (Yoda)
You da balm! (Carmex lip balm)
We think you are Extra special! (Extra gum)

We love any raisin to be punny! (yogurt covered raisins)

We hope that in Subway we made you laugh!  (Subway gift card)

Our niece stayed with us the night after I shipped this box, so I "heart-attacked" her as well, since she loves puns.  She was also headed out on a youth retreat for the weekend, and I knew she would NEED a candy supply.   Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the candy that I left on her bed, so you will have to use your imagination:

Lemon tell you something....(Box of Lemonheads)
You are beary special and.....(Haribou gummy bears)
You are o-fish-ally our favorite valentine!  (Swedish Fish)

I hope that you have had a happy Valentine's Day doing whatever you love!

My Punny Valentine

I just love a good pun, especially on a card, and more precisely, on a Valentine's Day card.   I am not a fan of mushy, lovey-dovey cards.   I think these just depress those who stand in Hallmark reading them wishing they had that "someone special" to send them that card.   And who talks like that anyway?   I am all about the card that makes you pause for a nano-second while the phraseology sinks in. And then you giggle.  Or even groan. A groan is definitely better.

I spent some time googling and perusing Pinterest for  Valentine puns and finally narrowed it down to my top 7 groaners- perfect!  We'll call this the "Week of Pun".  They were chosen based on favorite hobby, favorite movies, insides jokes, and fun memories.    I then did my own take on them for the hubby.    I chose to make postcards using the Avery online design tool for postcards and printed them on plain white cardstock.    Avery has some really cute stock backgrounds and clip art.  I opted to use Avery over Publisher for these cards because Avery also has an easy way to edit each image on the page, and I was making only one of each card.  With a few hours of downloading clip art and fonts and manipulating them in various software packages (Paint and Powerpoint), I was finished.   Each evening, starting on the 8th of February,  I left a postcard on his nightstand, and then this morning I gave him the last one.    

 Day 1: You are so deer to me.   Big T enjoys the hunt.  Here I used some scrap cardstock, camo ribbon, rub-on letters, and a big ol' deer sticker.

Day 2: You are the obi-wan for me.   Married to a computer geek. Of course he likes Star Wars.  I used a download of R2D2 clip art and a Martha Stewart background in Avery.

 Day 3: I stink you are so cute. Pepe is everyone's favorite Looney Tune this time of year.  This is downloaded clip art again with an Avery valentine clip art for the bottom row of hearts. I used a corner punch for an extra touch.

 Day 4: We were condiment to be together.  I actually came up with this one on my own, after seeing a lot of these sweet "you are the peanut butter to my jelly" type valentines. Some things I eat together just gross him out.  Why not make fun of it?  I actually created it in Powerpoint with downloaded clip art and then converted it to a .jpg file in Paint.  I then added an Avery background and it was complete.

Day 5: You are one in a minion.  This is a tribute to one of our favorite movies, Despicable Me.  This is once again downloaded clip art with an Avery background.  I also added googly-eyes for a little extra dimension.

 Day 6: I'm so glad that you are my otter half.  We saw otters in the water when we went on the glacier cruise in Alaska a few years ago. Most of the cards I saw online either used a cartoon or rubber stamp for this.  I opted for a photo, also downloadable.   Did you know otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't drift away from each other?   Everybody say "Awwwww."

 

Day 7: Will you be my tweetheart?  I just thought a tip of the hat to social media was in order.  This  was also downloaded clip art and an Avery background.  Use any hashtag that strikes your fancy.

I even carried this punny theme over to our Bible class goody bags. This really is a sickness. The teacher had already bought the goodies for the bags, I was just assembling them.   When I saw that she had these adorable heart shaped mazes, I knew exactly what I had to do.   Since I wanted to print multiple copies of the same thing and I wanted to use a font that was not in the Avery software, I used Microsoft Publisher for this one.

(Note to the parents: please don't tell the kiddos. They are getting them Sunday.)

But it could not stop there.  Oh no.  Big T thought he would be smooth and give me a punny card too (with some help from Hallmark).

I really love it.  How did he know that this one was on my top 10 list?

Keep the fun, and the pun, in your relationships!