On the 14th of February My True Love Gave to Me

A few days before the first of February I came across a blog with a suggestion to do "14 days of  Valentines gifts" for your partner, similar to the "Twelve Days of Christmas".  Hubby and I don't usually exchange Valentines Day gifts.  In fact we don't exchange a lot of gifts in general. When we go on our yearly holiday we call that our Christmas/ Birthday/Anniversary/Valentines Day present to each other.  It is nice to get a gift once in a while though, so I thought this idea might be fun.  Here's what I did for my hubby for "The Fourteen Days of Valentines". 

On the first day of February my true love gave to me...

....a pineapple in a pink bag.

(That one's an inside joke related to some of our tropical vacations.)

....two chocolate Porters

(Thanks to the always helpful red headed lady at the 

Mission Mall Liquor Store, whose name I can't remember)

...three little pigs

...four hot dates

(found these at The Dollar Store)

...five fishing flies

 Thanks to the young man at Trout Waters Fly and Tackle who apparently picked out some good flies.

...six solid-flow golf balls

....seven lucky lottos

...eight days a week

Where I promise to do a different one of his "chores" each day for an 8 day week. 

....nine Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (his favourite candybar)

...ten heart felt thank yous

Thanks also to Martha Stewart for the Valentine Felt Fortune Cookie instructions - though instead of covering florist wire with a strip of ribbon, I used red pipe cleaner.  I decided on personalized thank yous instead of fortunes, because I thought the "heart felt" pun was kind of cute.  You could also do "ten reasons I love you".  I was thinking I'd have to go to a Chinese restaurant and beg for a take out box, but Michael's has a great selection of patterned and plain take out boxes in different sizes for under $1.50.  Since the 10th of February was Chinese New Year I went with the plain white.

...eleven oceans

It was hard to think of a gift that comes in a package of eleven, so I searched the web and came up with some movies and books with Eleven in the title.  I  thought it might be fun to watch an old movie together and picked the original "Ocean's Eleven".

...twelve red herrings

While searching numbers on Duck Duck Go  I also discovered this book of twelve short stories by Jeffrey Archer, an author we enjoyed when we first met.  Remember "Kane and Abel" and "The Prodigal Daughter"?

...thirteen Latin tunes

One of the suggestions was to find a CD with a certain number of songs on it.  I started a search on iTunes planning to download 13 assorted Latin tunes.  I was worried that they might be ones he already had but I stumbled across a new CD by Salsa Celtica, a band we both enjoy.  As luck would have it, it has 13 tunes!

...fourteen favourite memories

This was the most fun and took the longest.  I came up with a list of 14 fond memories we've made together, collected some photographs pertaining to each one (had to scan some from our early years) and with the help of iMovie I made a slide show titled "Fourteen Favourite Memories".

On the search for older photos, I discovered a shoebox filled with some of the early cards my husband had given me.  I was thrilled to see it also contained some momentos from our first few dates.  I was able to start the slide show with "#1 - Our first year together." and included photos of the fortune cookie I had at dinner before our first date that said "A new romance may suddenly enter your life", the wine label from the wine he brought to the house one evening, a ticket stub from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and more.  I ended the slide show with "# 14 - The time I made you fourteen days of valentines gifts" and included the photos you see on this post.

In case your thinking "I wish I could have done that!"  You still can - just start your 14 days today. :)