Valentine's Day Family Traditions: Imperfectly Perfect Family Traditions

I have mentioned before that I am weirdly fond of this holiday.  We have a few long standing traditions that we do every year.  I ALWAYS order heart shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's.  Pizza makes everyone in my family happy and heart shaped pizza even more so. 

Every year I bust out the fluted glasses, dust them off, and put them next to our super classy Valentine's day themed paper plates and napkins. I then get a 2 Liter of any kind of red soda I can find, and/or some Martinelli's;  light some candles, print all of the free downloadable menus, etc. listed below and call it pretty much good.  The food is definitely a free for all of any random red items I can find (strawberries, raspberries, candy, chips, etc.) and there is no other real rhyme or reason to it.

Here are some pictures of the traditions over the years with links on where to get the free downloads.  Don't let this random, expensive, somewhat pointless holiday go by without spending yet more money, eating yet more junk food and showing your family you love them! ;) 

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Go to The Dating Divas website for awesome Valentine's tradition ideas and printables.  The Cupid's Crazy Cafe is one we have been doing for YEARS and my kids all love it.  I also always print out a "10 things I love about you" for each of my kids to go with their Crazy Cafe menu.  I don't think the kids even care that much to read it (hello, pizza and candy and other crappy food I never buy is sitting there waiting to be consumed!), but I am determined to stick with this tradition.  The menu thing is always a hit...highly recommend for all ages!  

This kind of shows you how the Cupid Cafe Menu works.  So much fun!!

We always do candles, have flowers...paper plates and fancy glassware??? We are a work in progress people.  Looks like this year I even got pink yogurt to go with our pizza.  Clearly not going for picture perfect traditions over here.

This isn't an every year tradition, but the kids loved getting this for breakfast on Valentine's day last year!  These free downloadable printables say "DONUT forget I love you".  I am also a big sucker for cute straws and I got these ones off Amazon.  The adorable milk jars I got from Michaels, but they are also sold on Amazon here.

The highlight of our family tradition on Valentine's day is our annual Blurb book.  My husband and I spend hours and hours in January (usually finishing hours before a coupon is about to expire) putting all of our pictures from the year before into a Blurb book.  I have about 10 of these hard bound, beautiful books that I have put together every year.  Blurb does an INCREDIBLE job of making these books look and feel like heirlooms.  I know Chatbooks and SmugMug have great book options too, but I have been using Blurb for so long that I am stubbornly sticking to it!

Cupid's Crazy Cafe...the best tradition EVER!!!  (You can download the free printable for this on The Dating Divas website).  This is my cheat sheet the kids can't see this part.  They choose a main dish, side dish, etc. and if they chose "Huggin" for their main dish they get a Cookie for dinner and Squeezin' for dessert!  The kids think this is super funny.  Or, I think it is really funny and they roll with it.  It never gets old though and I have been doing it for 5 or more years.