Sweetheart Dinner: Our Family Valentine’s Tradition

Valentine’s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays to celebrate. I’m not big on celebrating love solely with your spouse or significant other and never really have been. Instead, I prefer to celebrate ALL the love in our lives, whether that be with a fun Galentine’s get-together, a few simple acts of kindness to spread love, or a special treat dropped off for a neighbor or doctor. Once we had kiddos, I knew I wanted them to feel the love regardless of their age every single Valentine’s Day, so I started a super simple tradition called our Sweethearts Dinner. Each year, we set aside one night around Valentine’s Day to celebrate our love for one another. The focus of the meal is to share one thing (or more!) we love about each member of the family. While I make dinner, I give the kids heart shaped doilies (or napkins since I couldn’t find doilies this year!) and ask them to write or draw a Valentine for each member of our family. They LOVE doing this and it’s so fun to see some of the creative and sweet things they come up with.

Since our kiddos are pretty little (7, 5, 4, and 2) we also choose to go around the table during the meal and tell each other one thing we love about each family member. This year, I had also received some praise from a teacher about one of our kiddos, so we shared that, as well. It’s so fun to see the kids connect and focus on loving one another intentionally. It’s also such a good reminder to encourage this more often! They have really nice things to say about each other when they stop and take the time to acknowledge it.

In terms of the actual meal, I try to keep the main course pretty simple and usually go with Fettuccini Alfredo, since we don’t have that very often around here. This year, everything we had was from Trader Joe’s, and I have to say, it was so nice to be able to whip dinner up fairly quickly and not have to worry about too many dishes to clean up afterwards. I grabbed the pasta, some chicken sausage, a pack of baby mixed greens, a honey wheat baguette, and some fresh parsley for garnish to feed my crew. I set the table with our heart-shaped plates from Target, and sprinkled some red acrylic hearts I got at the dollar store around for decor.

For dessert, we always do a chocolate fondue in our Oyster Red Fondue Pot with lots of fun dippers. This year I used mango, rice krispy treats, Lorna Doone Shortbread cookies, Trader Joe’s Honey Wheat pretzel rods, pineapple, bananas, strawberries, and mandarin oranges. For the fondue, I used this recipe from Clover Lane Blog and it turned out amazing. It’s a treat for the whole family and one of my favorite desserts every year. It also reminds me of our wedding because we had a chocolate fountain at it that I’m pretty sure is still evidenced by the stains on the front of my wedding dress thirteen years later! Either way, our Sweetheart Dinner isn’t anything fancy or overdone, but consistently ranks as one of my favorite family memories every year. What are some fun and simple ways you celebrate Valentine’s Day as a family in your house? And what are your favorite fondue dippers?! I love finding new ones to try!