In the past, Valentine’s Day has been a very big deal. I am one of those lucky women who has a really romantic husband. He may not remember all of the dates without prompting, but he gets the important stuff right. We usually do a fancy dinner out at a really upscale place, and get a hotel room someplace for alone time. This time, I told him that I had something romantic planned. I didn’t mention money, although I did say I didn’t want to go out. After wandering around the other blogs and digging up Frugal Valentines ideas(Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, My Two Dollars) this is how our night went.

Mark and I used to have a lot of alone time. We used to spend nights and nights alone sitting in his living room floor with chinese takeout listening to music and talking. I decided that, last night, we were going to have some alone time.

I stopped at the store to pick up ingredients for dinner, some wine, and the missing ingredient for homemade low carb cheesecake. Once I got home, I got the cheesecake in the oven, started Mark making dinner (grilled chicken and veggies… MMMM), and was gifted with a lovely glass of red wine.

I lit all of the bedroom candles on the wall sconces, and the dressers, and the bedside tables. I pulled cushions out into the floor and spread the sheepskin rug next to them. I came back out of the bedroom to kiss my children and hug them and tell them goodnight, and informed them that for the rest of the evening I would be on a date and the penalty for knocking on our door was death.

I asked Mark to bring our dinner into the bedroom. Then, I went back to the bedroom and slipped into something more comfortable. He was duly impressed!

Once he was settled, I sprung my last surprise…. I pushed Play on the MIX TAPE that I made for him (Idea shamelessly stolen from David over at My Two Dollars. That’s right, it’s 2008 and I made him a mix tape… well, CD really.. but same principle. About 1/2 way through the CD, he heard a Journey song that he declared “perfect stripper music” and proceeded to pull off his t-shirt. I made all the right encouraging noises and was appropriately impressed. When he took his pants off, I reminded him that we still needed to have the cheesecake.

So, he stopped stripping and went to the kitchen in his boxers to get the cheesecake. As he walked through the house, our 14 year old spotted him and remarked “Well, looks like the date is going well.” We giggled about that for about 20 minutes after he came back into the room.

We fed one another cheesecake… he only brought one spoon so the trading of the spoon turned out to be fairly comical. The last song on the CD was one that is near and dear to Mark’s heart, as he helped sing it in our wedding… “Burning Love” by Elvis Presley. I was indeed treated to his rendition of the song again, and bed-dancing. This was the perfect relaxing evening that we’ve needed for far too long. We were so relaxed that we ended up giggling and cuddling and fast asleep by 9:30 PM. What a great night… and all for the cost of some chicken breast and a bottle of Chanti.

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