Back when son was younger and I was then married, when they sat down for breakfast, I always placed a card and Valentine candy on their chair seat.

Not a big Valentines romantic. Neither is DH. We kind of do stuff all year. However, tomorrow night I am cooking a very special dinner for just the two of us.

When my late husband and I were younger, with young children, and had very little extra money, I would always bake him a big pan of brownies for Valentine's Day. I kept up the tradition, and as the kids grew they got to share the bounty. This afternoon I baked brownies for my grown-up kids and grandson. My elder daughter made dinner, and we're having movie night. For the first movie, my grandson chose FernGully, the same one my kids used to watch when they were little. :)

My Dad always bought Mom a Whitmans Sampler for V Day. Of course, I was allowed to eat a few. This year for V Day I'm cooking DH a very special dinner. Spicy shrimp appetizer, salad, and Lobster Macaroni and cheese. Also chocolate mousse (Pots de Creme) for dessert. This Morning for breakfast I bought him "one of everything" from the bakery. Cost only $12, made a big impact.

When I was a preschooler my mother, who had been a teacher, would get out wallpaper sample books and blunt scissors and let my brothers and I "create" valentines. I'm sure they weren't exactly beautiful but they meant a lot to us. We were very proud to give them to each other and to my aunts who lived nearby.

Remember making valentines with red hearts cut from construction paper and glueing them on the paper lacy doilies? It was fun "mailing" Valentine's cards to my classmates at school. My brother and I always selected a fancily decorated heart shaped box of candy for my mother. There was a luncheonette/ ice cream parlor in the neighborhood that had quite a display. Wonderful memories!

Handing out valentines in grade school, lots of fun.

I remember getting ready for the Valentine's Day card exchange at elementary school. We 4 kids were to decorate our own little mail boxes, which were cereal boxes. Poor Mom had to set aside and save 4 or we had to use the ones currently holding our cereal. We glued on red construction paper and those white paper doilies, as I remember. When we headed off to school, they were festooned with all sorts of red, pink, and white decorations. At school, we were to put our boxes on our desks that afternoon, and then we had a Valentine delivery, with all of us scampering around the room to deliver a Valentine to each classmate's decorated box. When we got home, we loved to open the various little cards in their envelopes.

I loved the Valentine's Day cards that were sold when I was in elementary school. They were all sorts of shapes and characters. I used to play with them like paper dolls. The ones sold today are all rectangles and seem to lack originality or differences. But then I'm not a kid anymore.

In grade school we always had a Valentine box which was made from the box the graham crackers came in. It would be set out a few days before Valentine's day and how we each would hope that we got the most. A card back then would have cost a penny, I think. The pretty girls always got the most