Valentine's Day Ideas

Hey everyone!

Well, it's my year to plan Valentine's day (we switch off), so let the planning begin (Im a little OCD so it started a few weeks ago). Of course I would never do a full price date night - so my search began for thrifty but fun ideas. After scouring the web for the best deals on a Valentine's date night, here are some really good ideas that I came across. I usually shy away from celebrating this occasion on the 14th because its crazy to try and get in anywhere. So we usually celebrate the weekend before or after - this year it is the Sunday before. Anyhow, hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful!

Massages:
Almost every 'groupon-ish' website is running a deal on couples massages right now. These are really good deals for the most part. I ended up purchasing a couples massage for us off of Windward Parkway that runs less than $45 per massage and includes reflexology and a scalp massage on top of the 1 hour deep tissue. Its an established place too...some of the others that may be less expensive are small businesses (which we have tried one of these before and liked it as well...just a long drive to get there).

Dinner:
There are TONS of restaurant deals out there now! My favorite places to look are Groupon, Living Social, and Half Off Depot. Between the three of these, there is bound to be a place that you could enjoy at half the price! Also check out opentable.com and look under their Valentine's deals. Thanks to Ashly T. I ran across this because she had mentioned that Cinco was having a really cool deal with Steak/Lobster enchiladas for two and dessert for $30. Cant beat that! So check it out.

Entertainment:
Movies, Gun firing range, pottery painting, hot air balloon rides...all of these ideas have had good deals popping up lately. I bought a deal for movie tickets a few weeks ago and we will cash those in for our date night.
Another entertainment idea that is way cheap is the Movies 400 Tuesday deal that they run. ALL tickets are $5 all day. Popcorn and a drink are $5 as well. Some say this place is sketchy...I say bring it on! We have never had any issues there...I think its mainly because the place is older than the Avenues.

Gifts:
Flowers, chocolate, jewelry...you name it...you can get it half off. Again, the websites I mentioned above have a plethora of ALL of these things 50-75% off. Watch out for shipping though...most of them charge major cash to ship near V day. Sending your boo a gift before or after is still just as nice as if they receive it the day of.

What about the kiddos?:
The absolute best way to save on babysitting is to ask family to help out. Not everyone though has that opportunity, so the other alternative is to baby swap. You know your neighbors dont want to pay loads of money on a sitter - so ask them when they would like to go out and do the baby swap. You keep mine, I'll keep yours :)

***Day Date note: this is an idea that Hunter and I have been using for quite some time now. We LOVE to do day dates on the weekend. It works best for many reasons, but mainly, we get the best break out of it. We have a sitter come early, say, 3pm so that we can make a 3:30 movie. (paying matinee prices here too). After the movie, we find a place to go and have dinner (no crowds this early AND you get early bird specials). After dinner, we either putz around, get coffee, ice cream, whatever. The beauty of the day date is this: the sitter has the kids during times of WAKLEFULNESS rather than when they are sleeping. Can you imagine getting paid $10 an hour to watch the Bachelor while some people's kids are sleeping? In this case, the sitter gets to hang with the kids, feed the kids, bathe the kids, and put them to bed...and then we are home by 7:30/8 to enjoy the rest of the quiet evening ourselves. Your paying her good money...may as well get the most out of it, right :)

That's all I have for now...have a great V Day friends, however you choose to use it!