Our Valentines Day Fun

I know Valentines Day is over a week past but we had such a lovely day and I took pictures too, so I still wanted to share about it even though I am rather behind the times!

On Friday (the day before Valentines Day we decided to have a special school day where we basically just had fun decorating the house (I love homeschooling because we can do things like that and since we work hard at other times we are ahead in our schoolwork anyway and a day like that doesn't hurt at all.). I actually didn't get many good pictures of all our work but we made hearts to hang on the valances, windows, from the chandelier and just all over. It was great fun.

Above the sliding glass door we had a string of hearts on ribbons with gold letters on some of them that said "God is Love". I also added the red and white tablecloth to our table for a festive touch. Above is how Aaron helped me set the breakfast table with red and pink dishes for the kids and white ones for Ken and I. There are special little surprises at everyone's plate.

For the kids I had made little animal faces using heart shapes into valentines. Nearly all the paper I used was from Junk mail or other scratch paper that made its way to our house. For a little treat I gave them chocolate chex mix (which I had gotten a great deal on) wrapped in red (recycled) tissue paper. The younger two were especially excited to find them when they got up in the morning. Aaron was sure the frog was his since he likes green and sure enough it was. Both Aaron and Megan wanted their picture taken with the card. They enjoyed using them in their play afterwards as well.
For breakfast I made heart shaped pancakes. I enjoyed mine with peanut butter (that is a must for pancakes at our house) and chokecherry syrup (which I made and canned this past summer). I thought the syrup made it look pretty festive.

As part of my gift for Ken I decorated this heart shaped box (that I had saved from last year) and put some candy that I had bought in a plain old bag in it. (Ken doesn't care for most chocolates anyway (which is what usually come in fancy Valentines boxes) and so I could get something he liked better. I also handmade a card for him.

We thought about going out for supper but decided to just stay home and relax. Ken grilled some yummy steaks (from our hormone free 1/4 steer we bought) and I fixed the rest of the meal which we decided to eat by candlelight. I had also made a heart shaped cheesecake (with strawberries I picked last summer) to have for dessert.

The day ended up being very thrifty but still quite fun and festive. For more Thrifty Green Thursday posts visit Green Baby Guide.

What fun things did you do for Valentines day?

For a post with various Valentines Ideas and links to places like where I got the animal ideas go here.

Another post you might find interesting for Thrifty Green living is on 35 ways to use old t-shirts.