Valentine's Day Craft: Heart-Shaped Bird Feeders

One of my favorite things about my job (for those of you who don't know, I'm the Program Director for a youth development non-profit) is my girls group.  My job involves a lot of scheduling, training coaches and volunteers, communicating with parents, and working with our chapter's national home office, but I definitely live for the time I get to spend outside, teaching the kids.  When I worked up in Connecticut, I was a full-time coach, but I was excited to come down here to Charleston and run my own chapter.  This fall, I started my own girls' golf group, and last weekend was my first event of 2015.  For those of you who might not know, golf is not a very popular sport with young ladies.  Overall in our programs, only about 30% of our participants are female, and that percentage gets even lower as the girls get older and drop out for other activities.  I experienced this same thing when I was growing up and even had to play high school golf on an all boys' team as the only girl.  Well, the goal of our girls' golf group is to keep young ladies engaged in the sport with supplementary events to their co-ed weekly programs.  You can read more about that here (and yes, in case you're wondering after reading that, there have been a couple of boy moms who are very against this program), and find a Girls' Golf program near you here.

This event was not only Valentine's Day-themed, but it was also a Bring A Friend Night.  Girls already in the program were invited to bring friends who wanted to give golf a try.  We played partner golf games, ate healthy snacks, and did a craft.  LPGA studies have found that while the boys want to be competitive in golf, girls want the social aspect of the game, so we make our girls golf nights more than just about the golf.

While I had some help from Pinterest for the healthy snack, I had trouble finding a craft that the girls could do outside, without a table or any real place to work besides the grass.  Well, the girls loved it, and I had a lot of fun making it, too: Heart-shaped Bird Feeders!

All you need is: thin floral wire, cranberries, popcorn, Cheerios, and ribbon.  String the cranberries, popcorn, and Cheerios onto the floral wire, leaving room at each end to tie it off.  Once tied, shape into a heart and add ribbon to hang from a tree!

Like I mentioned, we had tons of fun and played golf, active games, and ate healthy snacks: Cupid's arrow fruit kabobs - cute, right?

And, that's it!  Linking up for Weekend Recap, Weekending, and Monday Madness!