— Homegirl

It is that time of year for the Valentines collection box to be made! All weekend long we were tossing out ideas when inspiration literally came tossing out the trash! I dug into the garbage bag and pulled out the huge Goldfish box and thought we should actually turn it into a goldfish with the mouth as the receptacle for the Valentines! We then carried the theme through to her actual Valentine's Day cards at Edie's suggestion of an idea she saw in Family Fun Magazine. "I'm glad you're in my school!" the card reads with Swedish Fish as the treat. This is a super easy idea! The easiest part is all the Goldfish crackers that have to be eaten!

There are very large Goldfish cracker cartons you can get at the grocery store. Fully open the carton so you can wipe down the inside using a dry and then damp cloth to get out the crumbs.

Duct tape is a big craft staple here with the girls so we had this on-hand. We duct tape the carton top back together to form the mouth and duct taped the entire box to cover the writing. I am sure you could be creative with the "treatment" of the box, but this was easiest and most fun for Edie to do. For the fins, we duct taped cardboard on both sides and cut out 2 heart shapes. Fold the end in to tape to the box so they stick out. The eyes are also from card stock and we folded a piece of card stock on either end and taped them to the box and then the eye itself and placed them on either side of the eyes. We wanted them to pop out. The body of the fish also had silver striped duct tape that helped tie in the fins. A sign was made using a Popsicle stick, but you could get creative here and Edie wanted it to say, "Pucker Up!"