Guess what? Valentine’s Day is right around the corner!
You probably already knew that, but if you’re anything like me, you feel clueless as to how to make that special someone in your life feel extra special on February 14.
I figured we could put our heads together and come up with some creative ways to show the special people in our lives how much we care. Feel free to share your Valentine’s Day ideas in the comments section! (I could use all the help I can get this year, as I’m running out of creative ideas since this will be my ninth Valentine’s Day with Ryan!)
Below you will find some of the Valentine’s Day (or anniversary) crafts and date ideas Ryan and I have done for each other throughout the years that have received rave reviews from the recipient!
- Candy Hearts Poster: I made Ryan a poster that revolved around the sayings found on the candy hearts that are always for sale around Valentine’s Day. It took some time to come up with what I wanted the poster to say since the sayings on the candy hearts can be super hokey, but it was such a fun (and delicious!) project.
- Now That I’ve Kissed the Ground You Walked On + Trail of Hershey Kisses: I totally stole this idea from a guy in high school who used it to ask a friend of mine to the prom! I placed a trail of Hershey Kisses from the front door of Ryan’s apartment into his bedroom where I had this sign propped up on his bed, along with more Hershey Kisses, the above poster and homemade cupcakes, asking him to be my valentine.
- Met, Engaged, Married Embroidered Map: This gift popped up on the blog back in October when I gave it to Ryan for our one-year wedding anniversary. I got the idea from a map project that I saw on Pinterest and changed it slightly to read “Met, Engaged, Married.” (The original read “Met, Married, Live.”) A map of the location of each of these special events in our relationship filled the picture space above the corresponding text.
- Love Quotes, Nicknames and Sayings Poster: This was one of my favorite valentines from Ryan! He filled a poster board with love quotes, nicknames we have for each other and goofy little sayings we seem to say all the time in our relationship. I felt like it was essentially “us” on a poster!
- Scrapbook: For our first Valentine’s Day together, I gave Ryan a homemade scrapbook and filled it with photos, captions and admission tickets that captured the first year of our relationship. Be prepared: This takes hours and hours of work. Phew.
Date Ideas:
- My favorite: A Valentine’s Day Mission. Create a budget (Ryan and I do $15 – $20) and both leave the house at the same time, setting a time limit during which you both have to get each other a bunch of little Valentine’s Day gifts! (You may see how we did this idea here and here.) We have also gone to the mall together and split up for an hour to each buy each other an outfit to wear on a date that evening. So fun!
- Make a special dinner together and then go out for dessert.
- Go out to dinner and order for each other.
- Go on a picnic. (This obviously works better in Florida and the warmer states!)
- One person makes a homemade dinner while the other makes dessert.
- Book a night at a nearby bed and breakfast.
- Enjoy a gourmet brunch at a local restaurant.
- Breakfast in bed! (Heart shaped pancakes are both totally corny and totally delicious.)
Questions of the Day
- What is your favorite Valentine’s Day memory?
- What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done for someone for Valentine’s Day?
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LOVE all these ideas, julie! thanks! 🙂 ps, your gifts to each other are so cute!
*You take heart-shaped balloons*
Little typo there with the word were! Oops!
I saw a super cute idea on Pinterest. You take were heart-shaped balloons and hang them above a bed for each year of your relationship and tie a memory from that year together to the string of the balloon. Thought it was really sweet!
if it’s too cold to do a picnic outside, take it indoors! blanket on the ground, finger food, and a glass of wine!
Oh my gosh some of these are sooo cheesy but soo cute! I especially like the Met, Engaged, Married Embroidered Map. That would be hard to do because, so far, we have just done the Met part. But I’ll remember that ;).
My favorite Valentine’s Day memory is making a spinach salad with strawberries … incorporating something red into the dish was purposeful and looks cute in pictures! Another idea … strawberry ice cream!
Loooove the Hersheys idea! I know this is pretty standard but heart-shaped cookies always go down well!
My favorite ideas you posted are the hershey kisses trail and the split up at the mall and buy each other a special outfit for your date that night. Both are so cute, creative and fun! My favorite valentines day memory was my husband and I’s first Valentines Day together, where I made heart shaped cupcakes and wrote I love you with icing on the plate. Simple yet sweet! I made a scrapbook for him too! Last year was our only Valentine’s Day as an engaged couple so we wanted to do something special! We had a fun dinner planned, and he bought me gorgeous baby pink roses with a card that had a young boy and girl, with the boy holding pink roses. Then he unfortunately got a stomach bug and we spent V Day with him drinking gatorade and eating saltines. Not the romantic night we had in mind, but at least we were together! lol 🙂
these ideas are all super sweet. you have the most awesome handwriting!
http://washingtondandc.blogspot.com/2011/02/first-valentines-day.html
This was mine and my husband’s first Valentine’s Day together as a married couple, and we explored new places in DC. This year, I got him tickets to the Crime and Punishment Museum because he has always joked around about wanting to retire and be a mystery novelist in his old age. I’ll probably write something corny like “These tickets represent how I will always encourage your dreams… even the silly ones!” It should be fun. And no Valentine’s Day is complete without a homemade card!
What great ideas! I love the mall idea and the one where one cooks a dinner and the other a dessert.
Lots of great ideas here. And for on the cheap!
I love all of these, especially the map and candy hearts poster!
Some things I have done include:
-a scavenger hunt of postcards from around the world with different reasons on the back i want to visit there with him
-a love box (I took 100 strips of paper and wrote 100 different reasons why I love him inside a decorate box with room for a photo on the outside from Kohls)
-having all of the emails we sent each other for three months before we met (we met online) bound into a book
-made a Mixbook (online scrapbooking site) of our first year together
-as for food last year we got dressed up and went out for fondue and it was so much fun!
I love Valentine’s Day! <3
Oh wow, I love the book idea! That’s so creative!
I love the met, engaged and married idea!!! It’s so simple! I’m going to have to steal that one, thanks Julie. 🙂
although my husband and i aren’t too big on valentine’s day, i am LOVING all of these fun ideas! i might just have to turn to my creative side and copy an idea or two. 😉
I love, love LOVE the framed maps!! I just might have to think about that one. 🙂
One year, without knowing it, my husband and I both gave each other a book of gift certificates for one another. One of the best Valentine’s Day…yet!
I LOVE THOSE CRAFTS!!!! Thank you SO MUCH Julie!!! I am so making those map frames this Valentines Day!
What great ideas! I love the map idea and plan on making one for this Valentine’s Day! So cool!
I love the handmade route for Valentine’s Day! It’s so fun to get crafty and work so hard on a gift for someone else.
you have the most amazing penmanship. You could easily make your writing into a font!
so cute!! Great ideas 🙂
these are the cutest ideas ever!! I have a quick question though – was Ryan always into making you crafts too (or cards or anything valentine’s-ish) or did it take a few of your crafts to get him to do so too?
On our first Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend had my roommates let him into my room while I was at class. When I got home, there was a card on my bed, accompanied by a heart-shaped bowl (that I still have!) filled with only green and blue M&Ms (I’m a freak and only like to eat the green and blue ones). Every year since, he goes out of his way to get me those M&Ms—and I have a feeling he will for every V-Day we spend together in the future!
On my end, I’m a big fan of those “couple books” that you can get at bookstores—where you fill in answers to questions about the other person. I think I did it for my BF on our first anniversary, and he loved it!
I LOVE the embroidered map of the places you met, were engaged, and were married! That is adorable. I may use that idea myself 🙂
One idea that a friend of mine used was she took a map of the town she grew up in and cut out a little girl outline from the map. Then, she took a map of the town her boyfriend was from and cut a boy outline out of that map. She pasted the two people outlines next to each other on cardstock and framed it – its adorable.
Thanks for the ideas! 🙂
Such cute ideas!! My favorite gift that I made my fiance when we first started dating was a fleece blanket- it was the kind that you take two pieces of fleece (I chose ones that were for his favorite sports team) and then put them together, cut strips all around the edges, and tie knots! So easy, pretty cheap, and they are really comfortable!
I made one for my husband too! He thought it was the coolest thing ever, and it’s still one of his favorite presents I’ve gotten him!
these are adorable ideas! i was just walking around target today thinking about doing something fun for valentine’s day. we don’t normally “celebrate” it but i still love just letting nate know that i adore him 🙂
Chris and I are staying in this year and cooking a nice lasagna for dinner with chocolate dipped berries for dessert. It will be low-key and just right. Thanks for the sweet ideas.
the CNN guy was talkng this morning and he mentioned Ocala (highway issues or somethin’). poor boy, confused when i said i have a blog friend there….non-blog readers/writers don’t get it!
last year, we’d only been dating a month and a half at V-day….but he requested the day off after our first date b/c he knew he wanted to spend it with me!
I made Keith a candy poster once…using the candy bar words to fill in the sentences. For example I might have written, “I have always a good time with you because you make me “snicker” (in which case I would have used a snickers bar) Here is the link to the one I actually made: http://myhealthypassion.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/happy-valentines-day/
Awwww these are all so cute! I might steal the “met, engaged, married, live” idea. I could never do any of the handwritten ones because my handwriting stinks! Yours is gorgeous though.
My husband and I will be celebrating our ninth Valentine’s Day together this year too. Although, we’ve never made crafts or anything for one another. You have some cute ideas!
my boyfriend and i did the valentines day mission last year! We had a $50 budget. and 1 hour at the mall….let me tell you, it was sooo stressful!! i am horrible at picking out gifts, especially last minute!! but it ended up being okay! he got me a really cozy blanket for my bed, pj pants and a lady gaga cd…i honestly dont remember what i got him though!! We didnt enjoy it, so this year it will be something else!! LOL
I don’t know if this link is going to work, but I wanted to show you all one of the crafts I made…I saw the idea on a blog, and then made it my own. It was definitely time consuming, but I loved how it turned out…and there are so many different ideas you can incorporate AND you can mess around with it and reorganize the letters and what pictures are showing on display! file://localhost/Users/Jaclyn/Desktop/index.html
(you may have to copy and paste it…if it doesn’t work, they’re little blocks…you age the edges and then use modge podge to put something on each side of each block—pictures/letters/scrapbook paper/sayings WHATEVER!)
Great ideas! I think I am going to make him some kind of map thing for Valentines Day, but I’m not sure yet. We are only dating (in Rochester) right now, but I’d like to incorporate something from our cross country trip to Idaho. Hm! I better hit up pinterest. 🙂
Nice ideas! You guys are so cute ^^
My boyfriend and I are both incredibly broke graduate students, so instead of exchanging gifts we always save up to go have a meal at a really nice restaurant downtown. I’d much rather have a memory than anything he could find in a store. We aren’t technically too broke to buy cards for each other, but we make home-made ones anyway, which I love.
We actually live 12 hours apart and only get to visit each other one weekend a month, so we are doing our own personal Valentine’s Day a week early this year. 😉
Thank you Thank you for the amazing ideas!!! Was clueless this year…saved me:)
I am always at such a loss for what to get the bf for v-day. These are some great ideas thought so thanks!
Love the recap! I have no clue what I’m doing for the boy this year. Since he loves to eat, probably a sweet breakfast (with strawberries, of course) and a small gift. We aren’t lovey-dovey so we usually just buy non-pink and red gifts 🙂 So glad I read your blog because one of my gifts gave him for Christmas was a Love Map similar to yours! Check it out —>http://cluelessnutrition.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/like-the-rest-of-the-world/ It was so fun!
Found this website on Pinterest so cute! You can attach cute sayings to all different kinds of candy, food, drinks, etc. and put them together in a basket or something decorative!
http://www.creatingreallyawesomefreethings.com/2012/01/100-clever-valentine-day-sayings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FXZIo+%28C.R.A.F.T.%29
I NEED ideas–so THANK you!! I will prob do the heart-shaped meal idea, and I like the homemade card idea with the hearts AND the kiss thing. Such great ideas!!
Julie, you are TOO cute! I love all of your ideas for memorable, touching gifts! Ryan is lucky to have snagged such a craft-y valentine 🙂
I have heard of this really cute idea where you fill a room with lots of balloons and write on the door to the balloon filled room “Get Popping!” and then the person has to pop all the balloons to receive cute messages in balloons, candy, treasure hunt clues, etc!! SO cute!! <3 (: I heard about this one for a prom date…the person pops and pops until they pop open a balloon with the message "Prom!?" inside! Haha!
Love these ideas. Valentine’s Day is definitely one of the more “challenging” holidays! I made my now-husband a scrapbook for our 1st (dating) anniversary & he really loved it!
I still love the “Met, Engaged, Married” map — such a great idea! And I like that it looks handmade — so cute!
Back when I was in college, I decided to do a gift that incorporated 100 reasons why I loved my boyfriend in a fun way. Similar to the sayings in Dove mini chocolate wrappers, I took 100 Reese’s mini PB cups (his favorite), unwrapped every one, and on little heart stickers I wrote down one of the 100 reasons on every sticker, stuck it on the inside of the foil and re-wrapped every one of them. It was a very long project but he was SO excited and happy that I think he ate them all that night to see the next reason 🙂
A giant card and using candybars to replace some of the words….”I wanted to get you a WATCHAMACALLIT but my 1oo GRAND slipped through my BUTTERFINGER….etc 🙂
These are so cute!! I especially love the ‘met, engaged, married’ idea! Definitely booking this idea… cute! 🙂
Coolest Valentine’s Day ever: Medieval Times, hands down 🙂
Aww, those are all so cute!! You have the coolest handwriting btw!
Cute ideas!
Daniel was planning on proposing to me Valentine’s Day of 2007, but ended up asking me to marry him on February 11 because he said he couldn’t wait any longer. 🙂
I usually get my guy a cute stuffed animal.