Spruce Up Your Dining Room Table for Valentine's Day

When you are finished planning a nice meal for your sweetheart on Valentine's Day, don't forget to address the table. You can add an ever more festive setting to your Valentine's Day if you spruce up the dining room table. While there are no right or wrong ways to do it, here's an easy way to make your table look nice on Valentine's Day.

Start off with a freshly pressed red linen tablecloth (my recommendation is to take it to the dry cleaners and let them do the dirty work - who wants to iron?!) Buy a tablecloth longer than you need so that it hangs down on the chairs pretty significantly. I know - you are wondering why would I want to do that since it'll just get in the way of the person sitting there? Well, you can take pretty ribbons of your choice, perhaps velvet, sparkly, or ribbon with heart designs on it, and get rather long pieces. Then in all four corners of your table, bunch up the tablecloth and tie your ribbon around it. It not only gets the tablecloth out of the way, but adds a nice touch to the table. Those of you with a round or oval table can try this too, although you obviously will just have to pick the places you want to bunch the tablecloth since you do not have corners.

Next, spread Valentine's Day graphics all over the table. You can print hearts off of your computer and print them on a color printer, cut out Valentine's Day related items from magazines and the newspaper, use Valentine's Day cards from past years or place down photographs of you and your honey. Of course you can always use a combination of these items if you like them.

Once you have all Valentine's Day decorations in place on the table, accent it with silver confetti in the shape of hearts which you can find at your local party store. Carefully cover everything with a see-through plastic table cloth to hold the Valentine's Day decorations in place, but so you can still see everything.

Set the table with your best China or if you really don't want to spend time cleaning up, buy the cutest paper plates you can find with Valentine's Day graphics on it. You can throw them away when you are done and move on to more important things! Time together and exchanging Valentine's Day presents.

Add red candles to the center of the table and light it for romantic ambiance. Then find or write a romantic poem, frame it, and place it on the table. You can either let your honey read it or you can read it to him or her during your meal. This is sure to bring on a tear or two!

If you have enough room on your table, finish it off buy filling a clear vase with water. Add red food coloring to turn the water red and then add beautiful flowers. Red or white roses would be the perfect choice on Valentine's Day.

Finally, add the most important part - the meal! Consider either my delicious coconut shrimp recipe (you can find a link to the recipe under the links section on this page) or make french toast in the shape of heart (make sure you get a heart shaped cookie cutter first) and then add whipped cream and raspberries or strawberries. Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!