Celebrate Valentine's Day with Your Family

Valentine's Day falls on Sunday this year so why not celebrate it all day with your family.

Beginning with breakfast, you can easily make a heart themed meal. Make heart shaped toast, French toast, or pancakes and top with strawberry or raspberry jam. You can use a cookie cutter to cut the shapes out of toasted bread or thawed French toast or pancakes or even waffles. You can make your own heart shaped French toast by using a cookie cutter to cut out shaped from bread before cooking. You can make heart-shaped pancakes by pouring batter into a ziplock bag and cutting off one corner. Pipe batter onto skillet in a heart shape. Serve with cranberry juice.

Serve tomato soup for lunch. You can easily cut a heart out of a slice of stick margarine to top off the soup. Serve with heart-shaped toasted cheese sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly and maybe some Strawberry Quik mix in Milk.

These activities could be done anytime during the day
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Bake some cookies or cupcakes and decorate with frosting and colored sugar or sprinkles.

Play bingo and use conversation hearts for the pieces. Older children can play the old card game - Hearts. Hide a bunch of paper hearts around the house and give a prize to the person who can find the most.

Do a craft together. Make bracelets out of string and beads and use some letter beads if you have them to put messages or names on them. You can also string large pony beads on a pipe cleaner and bend it into a heart shape for a pretty decoration or gift. Make cards for each other using construction paper, scissors, crayons, markers, glue and tape. There are also many websites with pages Valentines that can printed out and colored or decorated.

Pop some popcorn and watch a romantic movie. Small children will like Lady and the Tramp or Shrek. Older children will like A Cinderella Story, High School Musical, or Ever After.

Put on some good music and dance, dance, dance.

For dinner, you can make a heart shaped pizza. Some pizza places sell heart shaped pizzas on Valentine's Day. You could also serve spaghetti and meatballs with heart-shaped garlic bread slices and salad. Let the kids decorate the table with heart cutouts from construction paper chocolate kisses, and red and white or heart shaped balloons. Serve the leftover cookies or cupcakes for dessert or make a special dessert like chocolate pudding, red velvet cake, or your family's favorite treat.

Lastly, read a romantic story or Valentine's Day themed book together such as I'll Love you Forever, I Love You the Purplest, Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink, or just about any Disney classic.

Your family will love the extra attention and love they will be receiving this Valentine's Day.