Here are a few more Valentine links for you. These were delivered to my inbox this week. Before I share them though, I received this email regarding a frugal Valentine story that I thought I would share with you as well. It might bring you inspiration!

 Cards have gotten ridiculously expensive.
My husband and I no longer purchase them.
We go to the drugstore together, pick out the card
that we would purchase if we had the money,
 and read them to each other. Sorry Hallmark.

That inspires me to take my husband to the card store and pick out the most loving card I can find and let him read it and then take him out for a dessert somewhere and talk about it. Very frugal idea and very inspirational!

Inspiring Ideas has some cute ideas for Valentine Smoothies.

A friend of mine who writes articles for Suite 101 sent in some Valentine articles she has written:

• Party Games for Kids
• Valentine Bookmarks
• Valentine Projects
• How to Make Valentine Cards

If you like these articles, you can find all of her articles at this link.

Have fun this Valentine’s Day. Think of ways to shower your family with love without breaking your budget. It can be done!

Happy Valentine’s Day

My kids love to host parties. We have many homeschool friends that we invite over and have fun just being together and hanging out and fellowshipping with. Too many parties can really do wear and tear on a budget, so I have come up with a foolproof way to really make a wonderful Valentine party (or this can be adapted to host any party) that won’t break your budget!

Decorations: Homemade decorations are always a wonderful addition to any party. My daughter loves to draw hearts and then decorate them with dots from the whole punch or glitter from our tub. We usually have all these supplies on hand so there is no money spent here, and this becomes craft time for the kids during our school hours. After decorating them, she will hang them at different intervals throughout the house.

You know all that red and pink tissue paper that you have been saving from the gift bags you receive? Use it to cut hearts out to decorate your table with!

Another decorating tip: take an old white cloth, or butcher paper if you have it on hand and drape it over the table. Then allow everyone to write or draw about something they love. Keep it as a memento of this party.

Food: When it comes to food for a party like this, I get all excited because I love to cook! I make homemade cupcakes, sugar cookies, homemade chicken nuggets, and then serve them with chips and tea. Again, most of this stuff you should have on hand and should make for a very inexpensive party! For the sugar cookies, I leave them plain and we allow the guests to decorate their own for the party.

This is also a good way for your kids to get in on the cooking. My daughter made these cookies and she is so proud that they turned out so good.  Here are our finished cookies:

The recipe for the cookies and the icing can be found at All Recipes. Just do a search for sugar cookies and cookie icing.  And instead of buying expensive colored sprinkles, you can read a past post that I did on colored sprinkles.

For party games, we have played Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe, Hangman, or, you can find many other game ideas from Family Fun website. And for more great Works for Me Wednesday ideas visit We Are That Family.

By the time you are done throwing this party, you will be ready to plan another one!

What frugal party tips do you have?

I have many blogs that I read every day looking for great ideas that I can share with you, and even learn a few things myself. This last week there have been some great Valentine links that I thought I would share with you:

The Frugal Family Fun Blog has a cute idea to make scratch and sniff Valentine’s.

Little Birdie Secrets shares her tutorial to make Heart Strings.

If you have some of those cute heart buttons, you can make this adorable onesie called Wearing Your Heart on Your Chest.

Print these free Chuck E Cheese Valentine Cards (they are good for five free tokens per child)!

Skip To My Lou shares her tutorial on making a Ladybug Valentine.

Dollar Store Crafts has a cute Valentine lei that looks absolutely adorable!

What have you found around the Internet lately that is Valentine related? Is it something we would all enjoy? Email me the link! I would love to see it.

Last week on Facebook, I asked all my friends to share their frugal Valentine stories. Here are the few that I received:

This is what I did for my husband on our first Valentine’s day after we got married. I wrote a short poem, then I blew up a ton of red balloons and wrote each word from the poem on each balloon. The apartment we were living in had a drop ceiling so I tied a string to each balloon and used paperclips to hang them in order from the ceiling.  When he came home from work he was able to read his Valentine hanging from the ceiling. ~ Virginia Donahue

Malia Russell from Homemaking 911 shared a couple of posts from her website of frugal Valentine Ideas: http://www.homemaking911.com/2008/02/16/valentines-day/ and http://www.homemaking911.com/2008/02/02/give-loving-gifts-valentines-or-any-times/

The year my met my husband to be, I was very broke. I wanted to make him feel uber special though! He worked at Lowes, and every day he would eat his lunch in his car just to get out of the store for a bit. So I blew up a bunch of red and pink balloons (1.00 a bag at the dollar store) and put them in a trash bag. I made some hearts from construction paper and wrote sweet things on them. I made a handmade card from the paper too. And I made a loaf of banana bread to leave on his seat, he loves banana bread! I drove over to the lowes parking lot and first taped the hearts on the windows, except for the front windshield, and then filled the car with the balloons. Several of his co-workers saw it and snickered but didnt tell him why, he found out at lunch. Im still not really sure if he liked that or not, LOL. He had to use his pocketknife to pop some of the balloons just to get in. ~ Beth Morris

My daughter just pulled out the scraps of paper from various projects and made bookmarks.  She printed off “Happy Valentine’s Day”, cut that out and glued it on, punched a hole in the top and added strips of ribbon.  Free Valentine’s!!!~ Chrystal Tuckness

Hope you enjoy these ideas. If you have your own frugal Valentine story, you can email it to me and I will share it on the blog later in the week!