For 17 years of my life, I lived in Colorado - the most beautiful state in the USA, in my humble opinion. Colorado had the best of everything - incredible weather, four gorgeous seasons, every professional national sports team, the majestic Rocky Mountains, hiking, skiing, outstanding Universities… Colorado has it all.

I miss having the mountains as my directional marker to the West.

“How do I get to Colorado State?” “Face so that the mountains are on your left, and head North on I-25…”

I miss playing disc golf on campus. I miss Christmas caroling through the shops and downtown of Old Town Fort Collins. (You know, the area used as inspiration for Main Street USA in Disneyland.) And what I miss most of all, are the festivities in January/February in my hometown of Loveland, Colorado - the Sweetheart City, aka the Valentine’s Day Capitol of America.

Every year, the Sweetheart City is transformed into a beautiful display of love, the town painted red with decorations and large, red, wooden hearts with personal messages that line the main streets of the city. (My Dad bought one for my Mom one year, saying ‘Steve loves Cindy’ - coolest thing ever!) The city holds events surrounding Valentine’s Day, including (among others) the Miss Loveland Valentine competition (my sister was a runner-up in the ’90s - true story!), the unveiling of the official Annual Loveland Valentine card (designed by local artists from this thriving arts community), and the unveiling of the annual Loveland Valentine Cachet - a stamp featuring an image and a poem selected through competition submissions.

This last piece is my favorite, as the cachet is used in the annual Valentine’s Remailing Program - an outstanding global event where more than 160,000 valentines are mailed from around the world to the Loveland Postmaster in a larger envelope to be remailed from The Sweetheart City and hand-stamped by volunteers with the official cachet bearing the winning design and poem. According to the Loveland Chamber of Commerce, the city has been remailing Valentines since 1946. So cool!

While I’ve always LOVED to call Loveland my hometown, I must admit that 2012 is the first year I’ve ever participated in the remailing program - and I couldn’t be more excited to see the results! I decided to make these hand-made whale Valentines, mostly due to my recent obsession with Paper Source, which started in October when Marianne and I went to a workshop on making Christmas cards and gift tags… opening the doors to an expensive yet super fun hobby!

Interested in participating in the program this year? Visit the Loveland Chamber of Commerce link above for instructions on how and where to mail your Valentines. Mail to be delivered in U.S. destinations must be in Loveland by February 9th in order to be stamped and received at their final destinations by Valentine’s Day. So get to it!