Why I’m celebrating Valentine’s Day

I’m not sure if the title “Why I’m celebrating Valentine’s Day” is the best one, as I’m celebrating with my husband, obviously, so I should have included him in my title too. He has the same reasons as I; basically, it’s fun, there is chocolate and/or cake, a special meal and cards.
Last year in late January and early February I had a couple of discussions with friends about Valentine’s Day. Some said it’s a commercial day, all about buying, other said that it should be: “Valentine’s Day EVERYDAY”. Well, I can’t disagree more with both points. There are cards and gifts for everything, from V day to Christmas, moving to a new house, Halloween and so on. I don’t see why is that a bad thing. Every relationship is different, we rarely buy things for each other for anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, that is what works for us.
The second point, of “Valentine’s Day EVERYDAY” adds so much pressure on a relationship. I can’t expect my husband to bring me flowers every single day for the rest of our lives, we can’t have pink/red cakes and drinks/cocktails every single day and we do disagree sometimes. On top of that, we are busy with work and life, without having to build a house extension for all those flowers and working out a couple of hours each day to burn all those extra calories from the cake.

I hope you, my reader, are impressed with the stained glass biscuits I made, recipe will follow on CookStyle, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

1. Special moments. I strongly believe that a happy marriage (relationship) needs special moments. This is, in my mind, the reason to celebrate anniversaries and Valentine’s Day. I mentioned anniversaries because we do have a lot of those: the day we’ve met, our first date, our 1st wedding, our 2nd wedding (2 months after the 1st one), the day we moved in together. We also celebrate the day we took Festus, our dog. I know when it’s 4th of February that is the day we moved in together, I can’t just ignore that, even if we are away with work, we can do something a little bit special.
We’ve been a couple for 14 years, we moved houses, countries, changed a few jobs, got pets, we’ve renovated both homes we bought. Anniversaries and Valentine’s Day too bring back happy memories from years ago and we also make new memories for years to come.
One time, for Valentine’s Day, I talked with a friend of ours. He said he is not celebrating V day because he doesn’t seem to find a reason to do so. I told him only one thing, that his girlfriend might actually like celebrating it. He and I made reservations at a restaurant in the countryside and all four of us went there for dinner. The restaurant wasn’t busy as it is far from the city, it had some heart confetti on the table and a chocolate heart. Next day, our friend told me it was a fab idea, his girlfriend was happy and it was a lovely evening.

2. Cards. I love cards. I spend a lot of time looking in shops to find the perfect one and it’s a thing I like to do. All the cards I receive in an year are going in a drawer and, after Christmas, I put them in a zip bag and they go on top of the cards from the last years. I’m not sure what happened with the cards I had before, they might be in a box in my in-laws’ loft.

3. Food, food, food. Another reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day is the food. I love preparing special meals or going to new restaurants. My husband isn’t as excited about special dinners because, if I cook, we might not even know how an ingredient or two are called. I do that, I get strange things to cook and, most of the time, I love them. Of course, we also have dessert, cake or cheesecake in a jar type of dessert, maybe biscuits and chocolate… maybe more than 1 dessert.
For Valentine’s Day we usually stay at home. I love cooking and we might prepare the meal together, as my husband is a great cook too. The only downside is that he is more traditional when it comes to food; he likes to know the names of both dishes and ingredients. Cooking together is part of the fun for us.

Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?