Emma is having a valentine exchange at school today, and I have visions of her bringing home oodles and oodles of candy made from HFCS, artificial colors and probably some type of animal product. I’m not so much of a hard ass that I would forbid her from eating a few of these candies, but I wanted to think outside the box and send her to school with some useful treats and gifts to give to her friends.

Part of the fun of Valentine’s Day is picking out your valentines at the store. Since I knew Emma wouldn’t be into handmaking 24 Valentine cards, I let her pick out some from the store. We ended up with Disney princesses and Scooby Doo. Then, I ended up finding these fun Valentine bags at Target for cheap and I filled them with all kinds of goodies.

Each bag had a (homemade) CD of some of Emma’s favorite songs, a bag of cookies– chocolate chip using this awesome recipe, and heart shaped sugar cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking, and an organic lollipop… not that organic makes candy any healthier, but at least I know it’s made with real sugar and doesn’t have any weird colors in it.

I hope her friends like them!