What are some cheap but meaningful Valentine Gifts?

Love is all you need.

One year I made my girlfriend (of 5 years now) a giant card I made myself with 19 smaller cards arranged inside, which were smaller Valentines cards that opened up. One for each year I hadn’t met her yet. I also baked her a cake in the shape of a heart and made a rose on the top out of frosting.

It was $20 for everything, which was every penny I had.

DownloadSquad has a nice article on where you can send nice eCards for free.

If you have enough history together, an attractive photo album with photos of the two of you.

A hug…

you can never go wrong with a mixed tape/cd! if you can find all the songs you want from the library, then all it will cost is time and the price of a blank cd. it is also nice to make a cover/sleeve to protect the cd and, of course, list the contents. there is some nice free clipart out on the web, but i prefer to use pictures. even if you don’t have a decent color printer, it isn’t very expensive to have a page printed at a kinkos-type place.

My family and in-laws go on an annual ski trip around Valentine’s Day and have a great time trying to find the cheesiest, elementary school valentine cards to exchange along with some candy. It’s pretty fun to see what people find.

At a Walgreens, I found a pack of scratcher-style lottery tickets that were for different romantic things (nights out, etc). It went over really well, but I didn’t do such a good job on the follow through.

Also, one year I got five “duck bucks.” Except they weren’t duck bucks. But they rhymed with duck bucks.

What does the person you’re buying the present for like? A $5 present that is just the thing he or she wants is going to say a lot more than a $50 present that’s so generic it would make anyone pleased to receive it.

a coupon book that you can make…and expires next Valentines

You can write a ‘coupon’ for
like a walk around neighborhood
a picnic in the park
a movie and popcorn evening

etc

One year for Christmas my really broke cousin bought us all representations of the things he would give us if he could afford to. I didn’t have a car at the time so he picked out a little mercedes hot wheel for me, and gave me a vogue magazine with post-its on all the the outfits he would buy for me. For his dad who loved golf he bought a tiny plastic plane and a calendar of the world’s most amazing golf courses.

The presents may seem silly but they went over really well because he put a lot of thought into each of the unique gifts. This idea could easily be translated into a romantic Valentines gift for a loved one.