This post was created in conjunction with Family Christian Stores, which provided the materials for the “core” of the basket.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Valentine’s Day Can Hurt

Valentine’s Day has traditionally been a day to celebrate romantic love.  In recent years it has been “expanding,” but there’s still an undercurrent, in the culture at large, of focus on one’s “significant other” at this time of year.  This emphasis on couples can be hard on a single man or woman, really driving home the point that you don’t have a significant other.  Besides which, it can make you feel just plain left out, because no one’s bringing you flowers or chocolates or dedicating songs to you.

The Ideas

So I had already been mulling over the idea of blessing a single friend with something along these lines when the folks at Family Christian Stores asked for some “not-just-the-usual” gift basket ideas for Valentine’s Day.  Of course I was eager to jump on board!

I knew right away where to start my basket…

Basket Contents

I wanted this basket to communicate, “You are loved/cherished” — just like a gift from a traditional Valentine would do.  I wanted to include the old standbys — flowers and chocolate — that the recipient might otherwise feel she was missing out on — but I wanted to start the heart of the message with this book:

I read this book myself a while back and found it very encouraging.  The general gist of the message is that you don’t have be more or do more — God loves you just the way you are.  (Kind of like what I tell my little ones when I tell them that God made them them on purpose!)

Apart from that, I just started browsing around.  I was thrilled when I found this plaque.  The message is perfect, my recipient happens to be a lover of red, white, & black, and the cover of You’re Already Amazing happened to be red, white, & black.  So I already had a built-in color scheme!

(The plaque comes in a box, by the way; that just wasn’t very much fun for the basket!  So I took the plaque out of the box and just provided the box separately.)

I’d thought to get some music, too, but there doesn’t seem to be anything on the market like I had in mind.  (Any music producers out there?  I have a compilation album idea for you.)  Instead, I just kept poking around.  My other purchases might surprise you a little.

It may not be what you think of, when you think of Family Christian Stores, but they sell some craft supplies, too.  That means I was able to pick up some supplies for making the card, and for creating a motif to tie the basket elements together.

And, of course, I picked up flowers — well, a flower, anyway — and chocolate on the side.

Making the Card

First, I had to make the card.  Using a black-and-white print paper from Family Christian Store, plus the punch and a little bit of solid red & black cardstock I had on hand, I made a simple card.  Seriously, this was not at all complicated.  I used the edge punch to punch a strip of red cardstock, glued it to a strip of black cardstock so it would show up better, and glued that to a card folded from the black & white paper.

The most complicated thing I did was glue more red cardstock to the inside, because the reverse of the black-and-white print paper was a green-on-green print that didn’t go with everything else.

Decorating the Book

I also punched a strip with the border punch, from black paper, and wrapped it around the book.  Don’t tape it to the book, of course!  Just tape it to itself.

Putting it All Together

I forgot to pick up a basket, so I went poking around my house to see what I had and stumbled across this box I’d gotten from the dollar store a while back.  I thought it was perfect because of the black-and-white print, but I didn’t realize how perfect until I was putting everything together.  It’s almost a reverse of the print I used for the card!

When you’re putting together a gift basket, one of the things you’ll want to do is elevate most, if not all, of your items so it doesn’t look like they’re getting “lost” or “buried” down inside.  So I started by stuffing some plain tissue paper into the bottom.  (I ended up scrunching it down more than you can see here.)

Then I covered the tissue paper with a layer of red paper shred.  (I already had that on hand, too.  When I get packages with this stuff in it, I save it in zipper-seal bags, by color.)

Then I started tucking and arranging.  You may notice that I ended up moving the decorative strip farther up the book.  That’s because it was going to be invisible way down at the bottom.  It worked much better near the top.

Partway through the process, I decided to carry the border motif down by adding another border around the box.  The box is sitting inside its lid, so I just made sure I left a solid edge the width of the lid’s height when I trimmed it, and tucked it right down between the box and the lid.  It’s not attached with adhesive at all.

So there you have it: a gift basket for a single friend.  I’m not great with design when it comes to things like this, but just choosing that one motif and carrying it through multiple elements really did a lot to tie this together, dress it up, and make it “pop.”

Your Turn

Who can you bless this Valentine’s Day?