Why this Valentine's Day is about more than romance...

Little ways to send love this Valentine's Day...

We've never been that into Valentine's Day, forced romance doesn't really inspire us. But this year, in the midst of another national lockdown, weeks since we've seen family and friends, Valentine's Day feels like a nice chance to give some love and maybe receive some love too.

Not sure about you, but we are starting to feel it quite a bit.  Missing seeing the people we love, who make us laugh.  FaceTime is an amazing thing, but we're still missing actual human contact.  Also missing so many things we took for granted before - a coffee with our parents, a drink in front of the fire at the pub, a scone on the top of a fell with our friends. But it's no good dwelling, got to count our blessings, these things will be all the sweeter when we get to do them.  In the meantime, while missing people, we've been having a think about what we can do to give them a lift and around Valentine's Day seems a cute time to do it.  These are a few of our ideas...

We're sending a card...

We're sending Valentine's cards to let people know we miss them. Getting a handwritten card through the post is always a lovely thing.  Our kids are making cards for their grandparents, so all they cost is the price of a stamp.

We're going to organise a virtual cheeseboard...

Definitely missing our friends, so in the name of 'Galentine's Day' we're going to invite our friends to a virtual cheese and wine night on Zoom.  Yes, yes, we're all zoomed out at the moment, but having a wine with our girls is quite close to the real thing and anyway...Cheese.  If you wanted to go all out, Grape & Fig do beautiful cheese grazing boxes which you could send to your invitees, but really a Zoom invite is more than enough.   

We're going to send messages...

We found in the last few weeks, in the dark month of January when it felt fairly natural to want to hibernate, that it was easy to just hide away.  That's all well and good but after a bit we'd start to feel alone, a bit distant and cut off.  So over the last week we've made a conscious effort to message our friends, see how they're doing, check on them, just say I miss you. And their replies to us in turn have given us a boost.  A text or WhatsApp takes seconds to send, but it's had a big impact for us over the last few days.

We're sending a little gift or two...

We're having a think about some little gifts to send.  Thoughtful things that don't cost a fortune and can be delivered directly, to let people know we love them.  Some of our favourite ideas are magnesium salts which can be delivered for not much over a fiver including postage from Amazon - because these are great for helping sleep and relaxation, The Biscuiteers deliver gorgeous iced biscuits from around a tenner and there's our Robes - these are still on sale for £12 including gift wrap and delivery - mainly big sizes left but they wrap around and have a tie waist - so these would be a beautiful and long-lasting gift for someone, without massive expense too. 

We're letting love in too...

A few weeks ago our sister sent us the Bees Knees Journal - an exquisite gratitude journal to write in each day.  It was so unexpected and thoughtful we actually got a bit emotional.  It's easy in everything - the working from home, the homeschooling, to forget to give ourselves some TLC.  So we're also trying to absorb the love wherever we can - when a friend texts us, or tags us in a funny Instagram post, or our mam FaceTimes.  We'll take all the love we can get.  

Look after you, send some love, stay home, stay safe.

Look & Cover x