I walked by the Valentine's Day displays in Wal-mart a couple days ago and got a icky feeling. Sure, I love my chocolates as much (or more) as the next girl but my hubby grabbing something off those display racks is so… impersonal. And expensive.
I started thinking about past Valentine's Days and the presents I liked the best. Interestingly enough, the number one romantico (as one of my buddies calls it) item on the list didn't cost an additional cent.
The hubby knows I love romance novels. He also knows that because the libraries don't catalogue their paperback romance novels by title, I can't order them from the different city branches. I have to go to each branch and look at their selection.
So one Valentine's Day, the hubby drives to one of the big library branches across town. My big, tough, manly man spends hours in the romance section, reading the backs of the novels, looking for books he thinks I'll like (he knows I like Regency romances but what about time travel romances that go back to the Regency period?). Then he goes through the check out process with the librarian sorting through those stacks of romance novels (waiting in line NOT being my hubby's strong suit). He did all that for me… and I cried when I found out.
Cost? Not one additional cent (above our taxes). Impact? More than a thousand red roses.
Today, I'll be making my hubby a shrimp dinner. We don't normally buy shrimp for a couple reasons. The practical one being that it is costly. The real reason being that the chef (i.e. me) doesn't like shrimp (I'll eat it if I'm starving but then, I'd eat grass if I was starving). But today, I'll make it because he loves shrimp.
Yahoo Finances has 10 other inexpensive Valentine's Day ideas.
Comments (1)
Thats very sweet of you to make your hubby shrimp. I've always been a firm believer of the simple little things meaning a great deal more than the expensive shiny gifts that have little or no personality behind them.
Posted by Matt | February 14, 2008 8:38 PM
Posted on February 14, 2008 20:38