Old Fashioned Valentines Day Ideas

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Need some ideas on how to celebrate a simple, old fashioned Valentine’s Day? Here are a few things that you can do.

a vase of flowers on a woooden table with a wooden backrop

Old Fashioned Valentine’s Day

It’s almost Valentine’s Day and this year in our little family we thought we would celebrate this holiday similar to how we celebrated Christmas and have a good old-fashioned Valentine’s Day!

We will be making simple little treats, creating our own little vintage Valentine cards to send to friends and family, and putting up some old-fashioned decorations. Perhaps you will be able to use some of the ideas in this post to add to your own old-fashioned Valentine’s Day celebration.

Old Fashioned Valentine’s Treats and Goodies

Of course, all Valentine’s Day celebrations need treats! We don’t eat many sweets at our house and my oldest son doesn’t even really enjoy treats so we will mostly stick to fruit.

Something else I’m making for him are these little Candy Buttons. These aren’t made with your traditional candy ingredients like powdered sugar and dye but are very simple and tasty!

Natural Candy Buttons

What You Need:

Slightly soften the Coconut Butter and the Coconut Oil if they are hard. You may be able to replace the coconut butter with slightly softened regular butter if you don’t need these to be dairy free like we do, but we have not yet tried them that way so I’m not promising that it will work. Coconut Butter is very tasty though!

Stir in the Vanilla and Maple Syrup until all ingredients are combined and there are no lumps. Pour the mixture into a pastry bag or simply into a zipper bag with a corner cut off and place drops of the treat onto a piece of waxed paper that is on a cookie or baking sheet. Place the drops in a cold place (a fridge will work or this time of year we can just put them outside!) and coll them until hardened. Peel off the wax paper and enjoy! Store extras in the fridge.

Here are some other yummy treats you can try for your celebration:

Old Fashioned Valentines

We love sending and getting snail mail at our little farmhouse, so one of the things that we are doing is creating cute vintage style Valentine cards to send to friends and family. To create these we simply used some of the craft paper, glitter and things that we had on hand to create our cards, along with some free vintage Valentine clip art. Here are a few sources for you:

  • Free Vintage Valentine’s Clip Art
  • Free Vintage Roses Clip Art
  • Adding raised parts to your card or metal colored embellishments will really help create that “vintage look”.

    Old Fashioned Valentine’s Day Decor

    Now I’m not really sure what they did for decorations back in the day for Valentine’s Day (I’m thinking not much!) but we wanted to make sure to keep it frugal and simple so here are some things that we did!

    • A colorful paper chain.
    • Some wax paper ironed over pretty tissue paper and cut into hearts. (We hung these around the windows!)
    • Flower centerpieces (pictured above). This was a fun one, but still very easy! Pick up candlesticks, faux roses or flowers, and Styrofoam balls from the dollar store. Cut the flowers so they have a very short stem and stick it into the Styrofoam balls. Once the balls are filled, place them on top of the candlesticks and use as a centerpiece on your table. Super easy, even my toddler could help me make these.

    That’s all for our Valentine’s Day fun. Next year we will probably add in some simple little games as well. What are you doing for Valentine’s Day and what are some of the things you are making?

    This post on Old Fashioned Valentine’s Day was originally posted on Little House Living in February 2015. It has been updated as of February 2024.

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    9 Comments

    1. What a fun post filled with so many cute ideas! I love it! I’ve been thinking about doing some simple, home-crafted things, and the clip art pics are sooooo cute! My friend and I like to make Posy Cups, sticking the flowers in the styrofoam in cute vintage tea cups. They make sweet teacher gifts, too, for less than .50 cents each. Now I’m getting hungry, thinking about the fruit pizza. Can’t wait to try some of these ideas 🙂 Thanks!

    2. What a great idea! It can be so easy to forget what Valentine’s is supposed to be about…LOVE and this is a great way to get back to that by keeping things simple.

    3. Thank you for sharing this yumminess at the Thursday Favorite Things blog hop. Pinned to my Happy Hearts Day board xo

    4. Merrisa,

      Thanks for the Valentine post. We loved the vintage valentine pictures. We’ve printed them up & pasted them to heart-shaped doilies. Soon they will be hanging all over the house. Simple, pretty, & easy for younger hands to do with me.

      I love your new header?banner?logo?…at the top of the web page…I’m not sure what its called, but it looks great. 🙂

    5. Not spending a lot of money for Valentines Day! I am having tea party with my grand kids and a home made spaghetti dinner with my family! I am making home made gifts and cards and treats!

    6. I love the flower ball idea!

      And I think I am going to try to make your candies with some different essential oils for flavoring. They seem simple enough and a good base!

      Thanks for sharing!