Category Archives: Valentine’s Day

Easy Valentine’s Day Party Ideas for Your Kids

Guests

Let’s start with the guests! Coming up with a reasonable number of kids to invite is a great way to keep things simple and frugal. If you have a lot of kids, maybe let them each invite a certain amount of people. If you have one child that’s “hosting” the party, you could just have 3 or 4 other kids over.

Decorations

Keep it simple. The kids don’t need it to be elaborate. Just decorate the table and area where they will be eating and call it good! We picked up some window clings and a banner on clearance a few years ago and the kids love putting them up each February. Pick up a white, red, or pink tablecloth and some candy hearts or confetti to sprinkle on the table and you are good to go! You could set the table with glass dishes for a “fancier” look or pick up themed plates from the dollar store.

Food

If you ask my kids, they would say this is the most important part! They get so excited thinking about what they want to eat it’s comical.

I have two simple food ideas for your Valentine’s party. Let your kids choose between them each year. Remember that less fancy appeals to more palates – especially when your kids are young. So don’t go crazy!

Option 1: Breakfast Theme

Almost every child loves pancakes. Make up a big batch of pancake batter and cook them fresh for the party. You could even get fancy and make them in heart shapes. I know my 8 and 5 year old are obsessed with shaped pancakes.

Of course have syrup set out. If you wanted to get extra fancy, put out a dish of whipped cream and some sliced strawberries.

You really don’t have to even do anything else. Sure, you could add some fruit or bacon or sausage but honestly, it’s a party for kids – so you don’t have too! You can serve juice or water for drinks.

Option 2: Make Your Own Pizza

This will be a huge success! Make pizza dough (my recipe is here) and pizza sauce and prepare all of the toppings ahead of time. Have a pizza station set up on your table or kitchen counter and give each child a lump of dough and have them roll it out. Put it on a baking sheet and let them add toppings. Then it’s time to bake and eat!

They will think this is so much fun. Again, this is a party for kids. Don’t worry about the sides. If you really want something, put out some carrots sticks but I think they’ll be thrilled with just the pizza.

We’ll talk about dessert coming up! It gets to play dual purpose!

Activities

Have one or two simple activities. Maybe an easy craft and then dessert.

Painting

Pick up a pack of small canvases (5×7 or 4×6 is fine) at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon and a bottle of red or pink paint (or even blue)! Raid your craft supplies for some heart stickers and have the kids make a canvas like this to take home.

Decorate Cookies

Combine dessert and an activity into one. Have heart shaped sugar cookies already cut out, baked, and cooled. Prepare little bowls of frosting (and sprinkles if you’d like) and let the kids all decorate cookies! They can have a few to eat and then also bring a small plate home.

That’s it! With these easy Valentine’s Day party ideas you will be mom of the year!

Simple decorations, some kid friendly food, a few friends and an activity or two and your kids will have a blast!

If your kids are a lot older or younger than mine, adapt the ideas to work! Older kids will know what they do and don’t want to do. A movie night might be more their style or simply hanging out with friends. Kids a lot younger, keep it even simpler!

I hope your party is a success and stress free! Do you have any favorite Valentine’s Day party ideas to share? Leave them in a comment!

Easy Ways to Celebrate a Family Valentine’s Day

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February 14th. When you are dating, or married with no kids, you might go on a date or cook up a fancy dinner at home. Once you have children, even if you do go on a date, will have to plan to celebrate a family Valentine’s Day as well!

mug and heart cookies for a family Valentine's Day

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I like to find simple ways to make memories with my children and Valentine’s is a perfect opportunity to do that. Sometimes, life can be crazy and money can be tight. We don’t have to be elaborate. Even small things can get them excited and make a special family Valentine’s Day.

Family Valentine’s Day

Food

Yes, food is always prominent for holidays. You have to feed your family anyway, so you might as well make it special. Look at doing all heart shaped or red colored foods! Your kids will think it’s so much fun. When they get older they won’t care about the shape, they’ll just enjoy eating! 😉

Check out these ideas:

Heart shaped pancakes
Heart shaped pizza
Spaghetti
Strawberries
Heart Sugar Cookies
Brownies cut with heart cookie cutters

Think of your family’s favorites and see if you can turn it into a heart. The pizza is our go-to every Valentine’s Day. The kids talk about the heart pizza all year.

I want to try this artificial color free food coloring!

Also, consider setting a fancy table and lighting candles to make the meal more special.

Treasure Hunt

We loved this growing up and it is now my kids’ favorite! Instead of just giving them their Valentine’s gift/candy, make them a treasure hunt.

For pre-readers, draw picture clues that lead to the prize. For young readers have simple riddles and as the kids get older you can use more difficult ones. We try and have 6-10 clues for each child.

I will try and update this post with the clues we use for my three kids this year. In the meantime, here are some ideas you can use!

Heart and Love Themes

You don’t have to go crazy, unless you want to, but put up at least a few heart and love themed decorations. You can make them yourself or use something you buy even as easy as window clings or a banner you bought. Check Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, and even the Dollar Store for options.

The same with crafts. Either purchase a kit or come up with your own. This post has 25 cute ideas! This is a perfect afternoon project.

Tip: Keep your eyes on the Valentine’s clearance to pick up some craft and decoration items for next year.

Love Your Family

Use this day to purposefully share with the members of your family how special they are. Have each person write a note to each family member and have them at each person’s place at the dinner table.

Throughout the day, secretly do special things and kind deeds. You could either do them for everyone or draw names the night before. The name drawn is the person you try to secretively do kind things for.

Give your kids ideas – it might be doing chores, picking up something their secret partner forgot, leaving a piece of candy, nice words, asking them if they need anything etc.

Spend Time Together

Just spend time together. Put away the phones and focus on each other. Engage with them, be excited to spend time with your kids. Plan something your family will enjoy and have a blast.

The options are numerous. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Game Night
Puzzle and popcorn
Movie
Park
Any other family outing or activity at home

Just intentionally putting a little thought into your family Valentine’s Day can help create memories and traditions that your kids will remember years to come. They might even carry on one to their own families.

You don’t have to be fancy, elaborate, or expensive. Just do something and have fun!

What are your favorite Valentine’s Day traditions with your kids?

heart shaped candies for a family Valentine's Day

Love Tree

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Love Tree - Perfect idea to use in February up to Easter. Easy, memorable and affordable!

In an effort to avoid having to store (or rebuild every year) my Thanksgiving Tree, I am trying to find ways to re-theme it throughout the year.

In November you could find this on our table: Then at Christmas it looked like this:

The past month it’s been on our table bare and I decided it was time to revitalize the tree.

Now, it’s become a love tree. The perfect theme for February and leading up to Easter.

If you already have a tree, putting this together will be simple – skip ahead to step 2.

I’m not a crafty person. My crafts have to be affordable and fairly easy otherwise they won’t happen. This one meets both of those requirements.

Love Tree

1. Find sticks of varying sizes and arrange them into a vase. Use small rocks or glass pebbles to weight down the vase or else it will topple over on you.

2. Cut hearts of varying sizes out of different color construction paper or card stock. I used pinks and red, but blues, greens, and grays would work too.

I have a pdf of 3 different size hearts you can use if you’d like.

Love Tree - Perfect idea to use in February up to Easter. Easy, memorable and affordable!

To access the pdf, click here!

3. Hang the hearts. I used a needle and white thread. On the large hearts, it would look pretty to use a hole punch and hang it up with ribbon.

4. Between now and when you use your tree for Easter, take time each day to write something/one you love, someone that loves you, a way you showed love or were shown love, or a scripture verse about love on the hearts. Toddlers could color on the hearts or dictate to you.

What a great time and memorable way to focus on God’s love for us and the way that He and others show love for us.

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3 Ideas for Celebrating Valentine’s Day with Your Family

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This is the second post on celebrating Valentine’s Day. Today I have some ideas on how to celebrate the day in your family. One of these I looked forward to every year and am excited to do with my daughter this year. 3 Fun ideas for celebrating Valentine's Day as a family. Affordable and fun ideas the kids will love!

Secret Pals

Valentine’s morning, draw names in your family to be a secret pal. You then get to (sneakily):

Do acts of service for them: – Make their bed – Do their chore – Clean their car – etc
Give little gifts: – Draw a picture – Write a note – Leave a favorite candy bar on their chair

That evening before bed, everyone can reveal their secret pal. Even assuming that everyone has already figured it out, it’s still a good time to reminisce and share stories and thanks.

Treasure Hunt

This is one of my favorite Valentine’s memories growing up. Each year my mom would come up with a series of clues. She handed us the first clue and off we went. Each clue would lead to a piece of candy with another clue taped onto it. We went to six different places to find our treasures. We didn’t want it to end.

Pre-Reading/Toddler: This is actually easier with younger kids. All you have to do is draw a picture to send them on their way. For instance, draw a picture of their toy box. They walk to their toy box and find a piece of candy with a picture of their pillow pet on it. The next piece will be on the pillow pet. You get the idea!
Reading Kids: Write a riddle. Here’s where you have to get a little more creative. Adjust the difficulty of the clues based on age. For a little older pre-reading kids you can read the clues aloud.
To begin, go to where

of a visitor you are made aware.

In the bedroom, you will see

Under your pillow, something from me!

Next to your chair, you will find

Another treat of a different kind!

You got to that one very fast,

Run to the bookshelf to get the last!

Valentine’s Food

Be creative. I’m sure you can come up with so many options. 3 Fun ideas for celebrating Valentine's Day as a family. Affordable and fun ideas the kids will love!

Form food into a heart – last year we did this with homemade pizza – heart shaped sugar cookies – heart shaped pancakes – cut brownies with a heart cookie cutter
Make dishes with lots of red – spaghetti – lasagna – soup
Eat by candlelight and turn your normal fare into something special or make a fancy dinner even more over the top.

How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day in your house? Do you have any of the same traditions you did as a kid?

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Celebrating a Meaningful Valentine’s Day with Children

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3 Days to Celebrating a meaningful Valentine's Day with your Children. Focus on Hands of Love, Voice of Love, and Deed of Love. Great ideas!

Valentine’s Day. How do we turn this holiday into one of meaning for our children? Today I’m going to share with you ideas to use on the three days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Ideas that your kids will enjoy and that will also make lasting impressions on them.

Gather your kids together and tell them that Valentine’s Day is coming up and the next few days you are going to be doing things to help prepare. You can do as many or as few of the ideas as you’d like and can easily adapt for age.

Day 1: Hand of Love

These ideas focus on writing and drawing.

Draw a picture

It could be as simple as drawing hearts or as elaborate as coloring pictures of ways people show love or minister to others.

Make Up A Poem

Get the creativity flowing. It could be about images that come to mind on Valentine’s Day or ways love has been shown to you. Maybe a way a parent or grandparent has shown love.

Write a Story

How much fun could this be? Older kids could write it out and younger ones can dictate their plot to you. Fiction or non-fiction, this would be something you’d want to keep for when the kids are older.

Write a Song

If you are super creative, you could even write it for a melody that your kids know well. (Twinkle Twinke Little Star is a favorite of my daughter.)

Make a Heart Mobile

Cut hearts of various sizes out of red, pink, white and whatever other color construction paper or card stock you’d like. On each heart, write names of people you love and those who love you.
“Mommy loves little brother” “Daddy loves mommy” “Sister loves Grandma”
Hang the hearts to the light fixture above your dining room table with string or twine.

Create Invitations for a Tea Party

Day 2: Voice of Love

Here we focus on our voice and verbally communicating love to others.

Phone Call

Make that phone call to the friend, relative, or individual that your child has been influenced by or who has done kind things for them. The call doesn’t have to be fancy. Keep it simple and if your child feels uncomfortable help them come up with a simple script before hand. They can even rehearse it with you.

“Hi, Mrs. Sue! I want to say thank you for being my Sunday School teacher. I always want to come to class and I love the Bible stories and crafts you do with us.”

Or perhaps they can call someone that’s sick and just let them know they are thinking of them and give their love.

Call Daddy

Have your child surprise Daddy with a call at work just to say, “I love you.”

Visit

Maybe there’s a shut it you know or an individual that’s going through a rough time that would appreciate a short visit and maybe a picture drawn or poem written yesterday.

Skype

Some people we care about live too far away to visit and it can be costly to call. Skype is a great alternative. Set up a date for your child to call the missionary friend that moved to the other side of the equator and let them know they are being thought of.

Day 3: Deed of Love

Finally, we are going to do an act of love.

Tea Party for Widows

This one would take a little bit of advance planning, but would be memorable.

If your children are young and your space is limited just have over 1 or 2 widows (this is often a lonely day for them).
Simple invitations would have to be mailed or phone calls made before the afternoon of the event
Plan a basic menu. Cookies and tea or juice that your child helps make would be sufficient.
Your child could even draw a picture for each guest.
Help your child come up with conversation starters.

Make Cookies or Treats

Make up little goody plates (similar to what we did here). Attach a valentine your child made and and deliver to widows, widowers, friends, and others that could use the encouragement. Your child can carry the plate, ring the door bell, say Happy Valentine’s Day, and give a hug. Depending on age, you can watch from the car.

Financial Donation

Your child can do some extra chores and collect their change. You can make a donation online or in person to an organization that helps care for and love others.

Toy Donations

Have your child pick out a toy and donate it to a pregnancy center, shelter, or any where else that could use it.

How do you make Valentine’s Day meaningful for your children?

Come back Thursday for ideas on how to celebrate the actual Valentine’s Day in your home with your children!

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