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Stuck in a romance rut? Try these V-Day ideas
Enjoy this Feb. 14 with make-your-own chocolate.
Published Feb. 12, 2010
In our blog post last week, we filled you in on some potential Valentine's Day gift ideas. This week, we're going to continue the trend by providing a few slightly-less-cliché-than-usual ways to celebrate.
If you're one of those people who thinks Valentine's Day is a fake holiday created by Hallmark, this probably isn't for you. Even if Feb. 14 is an arbitrary date picked out of a hat by a greeting card company, we like it. So there. And even if you don't "have a valentine," you can try out these tips with a friend or even by yourself!
Tired of buying overpriced candies year after year after year? Skip the Russell Stover box from Walgreens and make your own chocolates on Valentine's Day. (There you go — gift and date rolled into one. Two birds with one...arrow.) If you want to start it all from the cocoa bean, go for it, but you can also pick up chocolate bark, peanut butter or other fillings for the inside, and decorate the tops however you choose. Check out smittenkitchen.com and search for "chocolates" to learn how to make hazelnut truffles and more.
Dinner and a movie is nothing creative, but this year the movie "Valentine's Day" comes out for Valentine's Day weekend. You've probably seen the previews — the ones in which they name around 19 big celebrities and play that Black Eyed Peas song in the background. If you haven't (as in, if you haven't watched TV at all in the past four months), we're talking Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Julia Roberts, Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane — it's going to be epic, if only for the star-studded cast list. Think "Love Actually" minus the Brits. Consider getting tickets ahead of time, though — this is the last-minute date idea for people everywhere who forgot their significant other gave a Cupid's bottom about Feb. 14.
Valentine's Day? There's an app for that. Actually, there are several. One of them, called Cupidr, helps you out in the romance department if you already have a partner. Every few days — or even more frequently, depending on how you set it up — it'll provide you with a few ways to surprise your significant other, romantically speaking. Also, it's free if you have an iPhone (which, granted, costs a lot more than free.)
In a long-distance relationship? Chances are you'll be Skyping away on Valentine's Day. But even if you're not, you still might be able to find love (in all the wrong places?) via Web cam, through Chatroulette. Now, if you haven't heard of this thing, you basically log onto Chatroulette.com, click start and you're automatically set up with someone else somewhere in the world for a video chat. You could meet a crazy. You could also meet the love of your life. We will only take responsibility for the latter. And be careful in what you're wearing/doing/saying — plenty people videotape and screen-cap these chats.
Whatever you choose to do on Valentine's Day, we hope it's slightly better than whatever you did last year.
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