Valentine’s Day
What better of a holiday than this to show your love and affection to your children and loved ones with a day full of fun surprises. Most of us associate Valentine’s day with couples and romantic dinners. This however, is a couple of fun and thoughtful ideas that you and your family can partake in if there’s more than just two of you.
Baking
If you’re looking to stay in the house and relax, baking is a fun and inexpensive activity for the family to do on Valentine’s Day. There are millions of online food blogs that give recipes for Valentine’s Day themed cookies. Here is one recipe for heart-shaped cookie pops found on Delish.com:
INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
1.Preheat oven to 350º and line a baking sheet with parchment. Lay out cookie dough on a clean work surface and use knife to cut a small “V” off the top. Shave the sides off to make a heart shape.
2.Thinly slice and place on prepared baking sheet.
3.Stick with Popsicle sticks in the bottom and bake until lightly golden, 10 minutes
4.Let cool, then drizzle with melted candy melts and white chocolate
Make sure to buy the ingredients prior to the morning of, and enjoy watching the family prepare and bake their Valentine’s Day themed cookies!
Movie Marathon
Choose from a list of family appropriate love-based movies such as The Princess Bride, 13 Going on 30, Tangled, or Ella Enchanted. Decorate the living room with heart-shaped balloons and prepare some popcorn paired with M&M’s new Valentines Triple Chocolates (found at Target for $3.19) for a sweet and salty snack.
Volunteer
Valentine’s Day has many volunteer opportunities that will help you teach your children what it means to give to others that are less fortunate than them. This is the perfect day for you and your family to volunteer and give back to the community. If your young ones are teens, the Valentine’s Day Social Opportunity in Cupertino will allow your family to have fun together, assisting at a Valentine’s Day dinner event for the elderly.
Picnic
Enjoy a nice stroll to your local park with a picnic basket and some Valentine’s Day themed sandwiches. Make sandwiches of your choice and simply use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to turn flat bread, festive. Turn on some friendly love music and relax with your family at the park, if you feel like having a laid-back kind of day. If you feel like stepping it up a notch, you can try these Valentine’s Day picnic sandwiches from SimpleSeasonal.com:
INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
1. A couple of hours before making your tea sandwiches, you’ll want to take your cherries out of the freezer to thaw out. If you are a poor planner (like me), you can always defrost them in the microwave. Once thawed, drain the juice off of the cherries, chop, and set aside. You’ll start out with 1 C of frozen cherries and end up with 1/3 C of thawed out and chopped cherries.
2. In a small mixing bowl, using a hand mixer, mix together your cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, almond extract, and salt.
3. Stir your chopped cherries and sliced almonds into the cream cheese mixture.
Now is a good time to include little ones with making sandwiches for their tea party. Using a heart shaped cookie cutter, cut out 20 heart shaped pieces of bread.
4.To make the sandwiches, spread your cherry almond creamed cheese on one slice of heart-shaped bread, and then top it with another piece of heart shaped bread. If your kids are helping, be sure to provide them with a dull knife.
Enjoy Any of these activities on Valentine’s Day to show your family just how much you love them.