What It's Really All About

I know that a lot of my posts are about cleaning, organizing, couponing, and household management, but that is just a small part of my homemaking.

My biggest goal of homemaking isn't to have the cleanest or most organized home, to save the most money, or to keep everything perfect, it's

CREATING A HOME THAT IS FULL OF LOVE, HAPPINESS, AND AWESOME MEMORIES.

I pray that when my children grow up they will look back on their childhood and remember all the awesome things we did on a daily basis as well as on specific holidays to make great memories. I try to keep my home clean and organized so that when we want to have fun events we can. I try to save money with couponing and other methods so that we have money to do fun things like vacations or spoil them on their birthdays and holidays.

One of my favorite holidays is Valentine's Day. I don't think of it as just a greeting card holiday or a time meant for lovers to have romantic time. I think of it as a special day to focus on how much we love each other: moms and dads, parents and kids, grandparents, friends, etc.

Here are our Valentine's Day traditions:

1) Luke (and the other children down the road) gets a Valentine bag or basket filled with fun little dollar items (candy, toys, pencils, cute little knick knacks).

2) We make homemade Valentine cards and other projects. This year Luke made cards for his cousins and friends and we put his handprints on paper and he wrote Happy Valentine's Day 2001 Love, Luke on them.

3) We make homemade heart-shaped sugar cookies and decorate them.

4) We have heart-shaped pancakes or waffles for breakfast and any other heart-shaped foods we can during the day.

What are your Valentine's Day traditions? Other holiday/birthday traditions?