Happy Valentines Day!

While I don’t have any gift ideas or Valentine’s day crafts to share with you, I did want to take a moment and leave you this note. A thank you note of sorts if you will. I don’t decorate for every holiday, yes it’s true, and valentine’s day happens to be one of them. It’s not that I don’t want to, but in the busy schedules we keep, it’s just one of those areas I don’t get around too, and if I’m being honest – I’m 100% ok with that. In the past I might have felt like I was failing because I didn’t decorate for every holiday, and add some type of festive touch to our home. I mean after all it’s what I love to do!

But over the years I’ve become more and more at peace with the simple fact that I don’t have to “do” everything, or participate in everything that comes our way. I do simple things to celebrate Valentine’s day for our kids. Yes, one year I used a heart shaped cookie cutter for their sandwiches, and made red velvet pancakes. They thoroughly enjoyed, and I enjoyed doing it for them, except the shadow to “perform” and do “ALL the THINGS” over shadowed my love for doing it for them. In the back of my head I felt like it was something “I had to do”. I’m not sure why I felt that way, perhaps it’s similar to how most women feel when we feel like we have to compete with one another.

I shook off that need for having to have everything in my life pinterest perfect, I bought some store-made heart shaped waffles a few years after that, and while I do put out cards and sweet little valentines day packages for my kids when they come home from school, that’s about it.

My husband and I don’t celebrate the same way every year. Some years – yes we go out on romantic dinners, and get all dressed up. Some years – he’s done simple acts of kindness all week long to carry out the valentines day love. And some years, like this year, we will have a quiet date-night “in” with take – out and a movie. They are all different, but I love each way we celebrate just as much as the other. The important thing is we take the time to show each other just how much we love them, not just on one day out of the year, but all year long.

That’s what I wrote to my kids in their Valentine’s cards this year. They are getting to the age where they are starting to become aware of rejection, and how it stings. I think sometimes in school, while trying to stay innocent, we can sometimes unknowingly set our kids up for rejection. I can remember as early as 3rd grade not getting a valentine from a boy I liked in class, and feeling even then that I must not be “_________ enough” (you fill in the blank) to receive a cartoon card with some sort of heart on it from him.

I think it only worsens as you get older. In high school and college it’s the love fest of who has the best Valentine, only making those who don’t have one feel “less than”.

I want my kids to know just how much their parents love them, every day, and especially on Valentines Day. More importantly that they know they have a safe place that they can home to, and feel loved and excepted for being nothing more than just themselves.

I had a completely different post planned for today, lol, but somehow every time I went to write it, this message kept surfacing up in my heart.

I know I share mostly home decor on this blog, and I love that I get to share it with all of you, but more than that, I want this to be a place where you feel not only inspired but encouraged as well. I’d like to think of many of you as friends. That over the years of me sharing my likes and designs, and you commenting on them, that we have become friends, and it got me thinking. I know that not every one of you has a Valentine. And maybe you have in the past, but you no longer do. Or maybe you have yet to find you’re special Valentine.

What I want you to know is that you were thought of today! And if this is the only time you hear it said, I wanted to wish each and every one of YOU a Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s not about participating in a consumer filled holiday, where you show someone how much you love them by how big the box of chocolates or the bouquet of roses is that you get. But it’s about telling the people you spend time with, just how much you care about them.

I may not know each one of you personally, but I wanted you to know that you are appreciated and mean an awful lot to me. Because without you, I wouldn’t be able to have this amazing community of people that I get to share my passions and dreams with 🙂

So I hope that everyday, but especially today, you know just how SPECIAL you truly are!

Happy VALENTINE’s Day FRIENDS!!!