For the love of birds...

Yes, we have begun to think about Valentine's Day around here. If you feel like hearts and love and all other things Valentine's Day related are for the birds, you might be right!

While poking around Land of Nod's blog I came across a tutorial for making bird seed ornaments from Homemade by Cameron. So, with an ample supply of heart shaped cookie cutters, I decided to show our birds a little love.

After adding bird seed to my husband's Home Depot list, I had everything I needed to make my own bird seed ornaments {full tutorial here}...

including a willing helper.

To hang our bird feeder, we filled our cookie cutters halfway up, added a looped ribbon and then with the bird seed mixture covered the ribbon and filled the cookie cutter the rest of the way up.

This recipe yielded 10 bird seed feeders, which happened to be more than the number of heart shaped cookie cutters I had SO we improvised with some non heart shapes.

After the gelatine set, I removed the cookie cutter and added a few hearts to our flower boxes {which I suspect will be more for the love of the squirrels}.

And we hung a few.

Ironically, the same weekend Grace and I made our bird seed ornaments, a good friend of mine and her son also showed the birds some love.

What I love about her bird seed ornaments is the simplicity. She used some stale bread, peanut butter {to act as a binding agent}, bird seed and cookie cutters. Her version is perfect for toddlers that want to do everything themselves.

*In the Made by Cameron's version, there is a step that requires boiling water to dissolve the gelatin in, definitely requiring adult assistance/supervision depending on how old your little helper is.