Old Fashioned Valentines

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:

• 3/4 cup Coconut Butter (Where to Buy)
• 1/4 cup Coconut Oil (Where to Buy)
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 2 teaspoons Maple Syrup

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:

• Chocolate Dipped Meringues
• Chocolate Pudding
• Maple Syrup Tulies
• Old Fashioned Chocolate Pie
• Fruit Pizza Dessert Recipe
• Soft Sugar Cookies and Strawberry Frosting
• Soft Pretzels (make them in the shape of hearts!)

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 Heart Frame Clip Art
• 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?