Today I have for you 14 Budget Friendly Valentine’s Day ideas from Tawra Kellam from Living on a Dime. If you haven’t already downloaded the free Valentine’s Day on a Budget ebook that Tawra and her mom are giving away this week, be sure do so.
In the mean time, here’s a few more ideas to help make your Valentine’s Day special, without breaking the budget
Using a little imagination, you can make your Valentine’s day a little more fun and a lot less expensive. If you want to add a little personalized romance or if you don’t have the time or money to buy all the pre-made things in the store, here are some ideas to help you make the day special.
For The Kids:
My mom always made a great but inexpensive Valentine’s Day treat for us. She would take construction paper and cut a big heart out of it. (About 8×10 inches). She would staple the edges together and write our names and an I love you on the outside. Then she would fill the heart with candy, purchased on clearance after Christmas. It was very inexpensive but we loved it!
Have a Valentine’s Day treasure hunt. Leave little notes around with the last one leading back to the kitchen table with a heart full of candy.
Leave sticks of red gum in their Valentine’s Day cards.
For The Lunches
Make heart shaped Valentine’s cookies. Cut the kids (or hubby’s) sandwiches with a heart shaped cookie cutter. Add a few Valentine’s chocolates and put a note in red with a big heart on their napkin.
Serve anything red for the day. Serve red Jello, red pudding, red apples, toast with strawberry jelly, tomato soup, red applesauce, red Kool-aid, strawberry milk, or red frosted cookies. Use powered food coloring from the cake store to get the deepest shade of red. Serving all red things at a meal will really have wow factor even if it is something as inexpensive as red jello and tomato soup.
Make red heart shaped cupcakes. Make cupcakes as usual but place a marble down the side of the muffin tin between the muffin tin and each cupcake cup. This will make heart shaped cupcakes.
Make hearts out of chocolate chips in each of your pancakes.
Things To Do With Or For Your Honey
Mail your pre-addressed and stamped Valentines to Loveland, Colorado and they will postmark them and mail them for you. Send them to: Postmaster, Valentine Re-mailing, 446 E. 29th St., Loveland, CO 80538
Make a treasure hunt for your spouse. Start by mailing or e-mailing him the first clue. Then leave clues all over the house, yard, car or his office telling him where to find the next clue. End the hunt by making a picnic in the back yard or going to a park for a picnic. Use your imagination and have fun. The simple things are the ones people remember.
Go to a bookstore together and enjoy the silence and browse. Get a cup of coffee and make a date of it.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day AFTER Valentine’s day. Everything is half off.
Mail a love letter to your hubby’s work.
Send your spouse a sexy email message.
Leave “Why I love you” message all over the house. Buy a package of the cheap Valentines. Leave a message on each one and hide them all over the house for your honey. They will get to enjoy the gift for months!
Use lipstick to make hearts and love notes on the rear view mirror, car windows, bathroom mirror or windows of the house. Leave a kiss on his napkin for lunch or dinner.
Make a bunch of hearts out of construction paper. Put a love note on each one. Paste them all over the front door or car before your hubby or kids come home from work.
If you don’t have money to go out, have a picnic on the floor. Use some candles and lay a soft blanket on the floor. Put on some soft music and have a romantic Valentine’s dinner on the floor. Use some white Christmas lights for additional romantic lighting!
Jill Cooper and Tawra Kellam are frugal living experts and the authors of the Dining On A Dime Cookbook. Dining On A Dime will help you save money on groceries and get out of debt, by cooking quick and simple homemade meals. For free tips & recipes visit LivingonaDime.com
With Valentine’s Day around the corner I’ve been hunting around for a few ideas for the kids to do. And while there’s ton’s out there, I finally stumbled upon one that works for both schoolwork and is a fun tool for making fun homemade valentine’s cards – an ebook book of Valentine’s related copywork.
Eastern Wind Academy has put together this 72 page ebook, Valentine’s Day Copywork Projects that is perfect for making homemade valentine’s day cards for family, friends, and homeschool support group or co-op valentine’s exchanges.
The first section contains these fun little card like verses that could double as valentine’s cards very easily. Like this one:
These would be great just printed on colored card stock, or printed on white paper and glued on colored card stock and decorated, maybe even attached to Valentine’s day goodie bags.
The next section is about 20 bible verses relating to love. These are on copywriting strips, like this:
I’m going to give these to K and Little E to copy on to homemade valentine’s cards. I might even post a few of these up around the house as a reminder of how we’re supposed to treat each other
The last section are love-related inspirational verses, from sources like Mother Theresa, Buddah, Ghandi, the Dali Lama, and others. These are also on copywriting stips like this:
All three sections provide a printed copy of the verses, plus versions for pre-printing, printing, and cursive, if you use those types of formats.
Personally, I’ll just have my kids either copy the verses on to the cards they make, or in Z’s case, we’ll cut and paste the fun little verses and maybe a few bible verses onto colored card stock.
Some of these verses would be appropriate also for a unit study on what the Bible says about love, or a notebooking or lapbook project for valentine’s day or the history of valentine’s day too.
Anyway, if you are interested in checking out these Valentine’s Day Copywork Projects for yourself, it’s available on CurrClick for $2.50, (but for Valentine’s Day it’s on sale for $1.50!).
I used a credit I had at CurrClick to pick up my copy for free, but for a buck fifty, I would have purchased it too. It’s definitely worth that for verses I don’t have to look up and a heck of lot less expensive than buying valentine’s cards from the store.
Good news! Living on a Dime is once again offering their free 32-page ebook on how to celebrate Valentine’s day on a budget. I went looking for this resource for you the other day and it wasn’t available, but now it is, so I had to share it with you.
I picked this ebook up in 2008 when it first came out and refer back to it each year for ideas. If you don’t already have a copy, I recommend downloading it.
If you aren’t familiar with Living on a Dime, it’s a site run by a mom and daughter team: Jill Cooper and Tawra Kellam, where they share how they each got out of debt and in Jill’s case raised her children on a very tight budget.
These ladies are generous with their experience, and I’ve learned a lot from them, their site, and their ebooks over years.
This week we had a fabulous time putting together our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.
Every year, as a family, we choose a holiday charity to participate in, something where the kids take the focus off themselves and what they want and think about other kids in other families who may not have as much as they have.
It’s part of our effort to instill a love of giving in our children and let them appreciate that no matter how much they may be giving up or not getting, there are others who have less.
Well this year, we chose to put together shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. Operation Christmas Child is an outreach ministry through Samaritan’s Purse, where they send shoe boxes packed with fun kid friendly toys and practical hygiene items to needy children around the world.
Operation Christmas Child allows you to use either a regular size shoebox, wrapped, or the plastic shoe boxes you can buy for a $1. I chose to do the plastic shoe boxes, because then that gives the mom or child a durable box to store things in.
The kids and I printed off the list of suggested items and discussed them. Each box has to be marked whether it is for:
A boy 2-4
A boy 5-9
A boy 10-14
A girl 2-4
A girl 5-9
A girl 10-14
So that worked out perfectly for us. Little E did a box for a girl 5-9, Z did a box for a boy 5-9, J did a box for a boy 10-14, and K did a box for a girl 10-14.
No big surprise that Little E’s box was full of pink girly things and Z’s had balls and cars
But I’m also really proud of Z who is into war stuff, for understanding and respecting that anything related to war was not allowed in the boxes. And it was a good opportunity to explain why – for many children war is not a game, but all too stark of a reality.
After invading a store for an hour, we came home with bags of stuff and interestingly enough it was exactly the right amount to fit inside the shoe boxes. Not only did the kids choose age appropriate kid stuff, but they also included pratical items like:
notebooks & pens
brush or comb (and hair clips or bands for the girls)
a bar of soap & wash cloth
a tshirt
toothpaste and toothbrush
And that too gave us the opportunity to talk about how some basic items like these are luxaries in other areas of the world, that not everyone can just go to the grocery store any time they want.
To personalize the boxes, we went ahead and printed off the Operation Christmas Child coloring page, and filled out a little bit of the information about where the boxes were coming from and about each child who packed them.
Kate even wrote a personal letter to the person recieving her box.
After the boxes were all packed up, we chose to donate the shipping costs online so that we could get the barcoded labels. This is a really cool feature because Samaritan’s Purse will email us and let us know where in the world our boxes are shipped (and thus, making this a geography lesson as well)
If you haven’t already chosen a christmas charity to participate in this year, I encourage you to check out doing a Operation Christmas Child shoebox. It’s a lot of fun and provides a ton of discussion opportunities.
But either way, choosing any ministry or charity to work with at Christmas time is a wonderful way to help our children (and ourselves) take their eyes and thoughts off themselves and what they want and think of others, the way Christ would want us to.
Normally I start my holiday planning back in September, figuring out my budget, who I need to buy gifts for, and what we are going to make. But this year I got a late start, and with the Fall Road Trip consuming my November, I’ve realized that I need to fall back on some tried and true sources for inexpensive christmas gifts.
Now don’t get me wrong. I prefer to give gifts that reflect that person’s interests and uniqueness. But I do have some standard fall back gifts. My favorite place to hunt for christmas gifts when cash is short is the thrift store.
Seriously.
Some fantastic, inexpensive Christmas gifts can be found at the thrift store – in new, still in the box or with the tags condition.
The first time we discovered this was back during our first financial crisis ten years ago. We had $20 for christmas gifts that year, and it was the thrift store that allowed us to stay in budget and still enlist Santa, fill stockings, and give presents to close friends and family.
Hidden on what looks like disorganized messy shelves of stuff is a treasure trove of inexpensive gift ideas.
Not only will you find holiday specific items, like on the shelves in the picture above, but also still in the box or new items that the previous owners just didn’t have a use for. These are in fabulous condition and so much less expensive than buying new. Here are two of the types of items I picked up this weekend:
The mugs are in perfect condition and will be great gifts when paired with hot chocolate, herbal tea, or even candy
The jars have also never been used, and will make perfect containers for homemade hot cocoa mix or little candies.
Now these are wonderful gifts for friends and teachers, and such, but I also like to pick up more thoughtful, individual gifts at the thrift store too. If you look in the nick-nacks shelves or over in the housewares section, you can also find some treasures.
Here you can find home decor items, figurines (have a collector in your family?), new candles (oh I love candles…), little boxes (hint, hint), and all kinds of fun things. Even beautiful throws and decorator items. (Heck, I even bought new sets of sheers and curtains for both Z & E at the thrift store – they were thrilled!)
The trick is to look for the items that are is the best condition possible and are a really good deal. (Most thrift stores also have a discount day, try going on those days too.)
The book, toy, electronic, and software isles can yield some great results too. This weekend I picked up a couple of cd players to give to the kids as early Christmas presents for our Fall Road Trip, and a handful of unopened educational game software that would have made great stocking stuffers if I weren’t going to use them for the road trip.
Even in the shoes and clothes you can score some great deals. This weekend, I picked up new, unworn fashionable boots for K (which she loves!), snow boots for Z and J, and like new boots for Little E, plus a whole slew of warm winter clothes in perfect condition, including cute pjs for Little E that still had tags on. Here’s a few of the items that we found that would have been great gifts, if we hadn’t been shopping for the road trip:
boots, jeans, sweater, & gloves
brand new overalls, gloves, and talking kitty cat (in perfect condition)
button down shirt, leather coat, & gloves
I also picked up a few secret things that I can’t share here, cuz the people I bought them for might actually read this. But believe me, they won’t be able to tell that their gifts were purchased at the thrift store and not the department store :)
The point is to keep an open mind and look for new or nearly new items that would make fabulous, thoughtful gifts. Your budget will thank you and so will your friends and family!
To personalize the boxes, we went ahead and printed off the 
The mugs are in perfect condition and will be great gifts when paired with hot chocolate, herbal tea, or even candy
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