10 Frugal Ways to Make Valentine’s Day Special

Valentine’s Day is a commercialized holiday in the U.S. It has a rich history that begins with Christian martyrs and includes many folk traditions and legends. In the 14^th century, Geoffrey Chaucer associated Valentine’s Day with romantic love (source). Since this time, individuals have written love letters and exchanged tokens of their affection on February 14^th.  The industrial revolution made it possible for these tokens to be mass produced.

I appreciate that Valentine’s Day provides a reminder to express love to my husband and family. However, I don’t have a lot of money to spend on boxes of chocolates, greeting cards, stuffed animals, bouquets of flowers, etc. Even if I had the money, I’d probably prefer to give something other than mass-produced items that contain generic messages.

Thankfully, there are many free and low-cost ways that we can make Valentine’s Day special. Here are a few ideas that I’ve brainstormed.

Frugal ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day

Make handmade valentines or write a love letter

This option has to be the easiest and least expensive way to make Valentine’s Day special! Instead of buying expensive greeting cards, we can use simple supplies (construction paper, stickers, glitter, etc.) to make valentines (if you don’t have these things on hand, then you can buy inexpensive kits that contain the supplies you’ll need). Likewise, we can grab paper and pens and write love letters to our spouses.

Make heart-shaped foods

We use hearts to symbolize love, so why not fill our plates with heart-shaped foods on Valentine’s Day? The possibilities are endless. Using cookie cutters, silicone molds, special pans, or even just knives, we can create heart-shaped varieties of many foods for our families: pancakes, toast, sandwiches, cookies, cakes, etc.

Prepare favorite foods

If heart-shaped foods seem a little cheesy to you, then you can just stick to making your family’s favorite foods. Whether it’s for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (or all three!), we can be sure to make our families’ favorite foods on Valentine’s Day.

Make a photo book or scrapbook

If your family is anything like mine, then you have thousands of pictures in digital format, but very few printed or in photo albums. One way to remedy this is to set aside some time on Valentine’s Day to print some photos and put them in photo albums or to create photo books (many retailers allow you to do this online and they’ll print and mail the book to you). Doing this would give our families a chance to enjoy a walk down memory lane and we’d walk away with books that contain printed versions of some of our photos!

Work together to make something for the home

Photo books and scrapbooks aren’t the only things we can work together with our spouses or families to make. We can work on other projects that will create something for our homes. For example, we can paint a picture, refinish a table, or create a gallery wall. Whatever we choose, we can fellowship as we work together, creating lasting memories and nice items for our homes.

Take the day off and relax

We don’t always have to do something in order to have meaningful time together. Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do is to simply have extra time together. If they are able to do so, spouses who work outside of the home can take the day off work. We can sleep in a bit, have a leisurely breakfast, go on a nice walk if the weather is pleasant, and simply enjoy the time together.

Work together to cook copycat versions of restaurant favorites

Eating out often means you can eat some of your favorite dishes, but it’s also pricey. Thankfully, we can recreate these dishes at home. We can decide what dishes we want to recreate and then search the internet for “copycat” recipes. People have shared these for almost every restaurant dish out there! Whether it’s a pasta dish from an Italian place or a salad from a deli, we can have fun recreating—and eating—these delicious dishes.

Write a bucket list for your marriage or family

Dreaming about the future and imagining what we could someday be breathes new life into marriages and families. Because of this, one very meaningful thing to do as a couple or family is to create a bucket list. Where do we want to travel? What are some activities we want to try? What do we want to accomplish? Knowing the answers to these types of questions fosters hope and gives us common goals towards which to work.

Have some single friends over for a night of fellowship

I’ve heard single adults joke that Valentine’s Day is the day of the year when everyone wants them around…so they can babysit. In other words, couples with children want to go out, so babysitting services are in high demand. Instead of asking single friends to babysit, we could invite them over for dinner. Not all singles feel lonely on Valentine’s Day, but many wish they had spouses and kids of their own, so Valentine’s Day can be a somber day. Inviting them over for fellowship won’t eliminate their desire for marriage, but it is an easy way that we can show them that they are not alone and that they mean more to us than their babysitting skills.

Volunteer together with a local charity

Few things convey love and help us bond with one another like serving others. One way to do this is by completing intentional acts of kindness during the entire month of February (see a calendar of kind acts here). Another way is by volunteering as a couple or family on (or around) Valentine’s Day. Local homeless shelters, nursing homes, food banks, mentoring groups, animal shelters, environmental groups, churches, etc. would be happy to have our help!

Final thoughts

I’m not certain which of these we will do this year, but I’m leaning towards a mash-up of making heart-shaped foods and preparing favorite foods. Pizza is a family favorite and it’s relatively easy to form pizza dough into heart shapes, so I think we’ll have heart-shaped pizzas!

I’m sure there are dozens of other ways to make Valentine’s Day special without breaking the bank. What ideas do you have? Please share these with us!

Shared at the following:

Encouraging Hearts and Home, Over the Moon, and Busy Monday.