Simple and Cheap Valentine's Ideas

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching and you need some ideas for easy and cheap gifts. Well, here are some ideas that you can use for the various people in your life.

First of all, instead of purchasing the expensive chocolates in the heart shaped box, you can make your own. All you need are heart shaped candy molds and chocolate chips. Heart shaped candy molds can be purchased at a number of places including places like Walmart or Kmart as well as craft stores like AC Moore and Michaels. They are relatively inexpensive and can be used over and over, making their lifetime costs even cheaper. Then, all you need to do is melt chocolate chips in the microwave and spoon the chocolate into the molds. To melt chocolate in the microwave, simply dump a bag into a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for one minute and stir. Chocolate chips do not look like they've melted until you have stirred them. If there are still solid pieces in the bowl, you will want to microwave some more. Do this in 30 second intervals, stirring between each. If you over-microwave chocolate, it will get gummy and be impossible to work with. Once the molds are filled, you can put it into the refrigerator for an hour and then the chocolates should pop right out! Put them in pretty cupcake liners in a shallow box or simply put several in a bag and tie with a pretty ribbon for a beautiful gift that will be appreciated!

If, however, making your own chocolates is not the idea for you, how about creating your own chocolate wrappers. You can do this by purchasing any regular chocolate bar. It does not have the be the traditional Hershey bar but can be anything you or your sweetheart may like. Measure how long the bar is and then measure around it. Cut out a piece of regular white paper using these dimensions. For example, if your chocolate bar is 6 inches long and you measure 6 inches around it, your will cut out a 6 inch by 6 inch square. You might want to make the paper just a big longer than measured to allow for a slight overlap in the end. You can then decorate your paper in any way you see fit. Using hearts around your sweatheart's name might be one idea. Or you can decorate the actual name you print on like using mini hearts to make the actual letters. Once you are finished, you can tape the piece of paper around the chocolate bar for a unique, personalized gift. Similarly, you can use a computer graphics program to make the design of your wrapper and print it out and tape it on. This way is nice too but it ma be even better if it is handmade.

To make cute Valentine's Day cards, you can cut out lots of hearts from construction paper. Punch a very small hold in the tip of each heart and slip them onto a lollipop stick. The lollipop becomes the center of a heart flower and the hearts become the petals around the pop. You may want to use tape to secure the hearts so that they don't fall off of the stick!

A final cute Valentine gift would be to glue pictures of loved ones onto pre-cut hearts. You would want to pre-cut the hearts from a heavy paper or cardstock. You can use these hear/pictures in several different ways. For one, you could make a wreath of them around the edges of a paper plate. If this does not suit you, you can hang them from a hanger to make a mobile. Finally, you could purchase a wire-frame tree from a craft store and hang the pictures on the branches of the tree. Any one of these could make a nice gift!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!