My {Cheap & Easy} Valentine’s Dinner for Kids

I’ve never been on to care much for Valentine’s Day. This year that’s all changed.

Kailyn is getting pretty excited. In fact, we made homemade Valentine’s for nearly two hours Monday evening. And, since my girls are such girly girls I schemed up the idea that we would have a “fancy” dinner Friday evening for Valentine’s Day.

While they know we’re going to have Valentines Dinner they haven’t seen anything I’ve bought yet and won’t until they help me get everything ready Friday evening.

My plan was to spend around $20 for the dinner and a gift for them but I got sucked in at the Dollar Tree. Hard to resist when everything is a dollar. 😉

Here’s the breakdown of our meal plans and how much I spent.

Dinner Food

Our dinner didn’t cost me anything. I already had everything we need – with exception of the beverage and dessert.

For dinner will be the girls favorites:

• Pot Roast w/ Potatoes & Carrots (cooked in the crockpot)
• Baked Beans (My girls could eat these for every meal. Ava is always requesting “fake” beans for dinner.)
• Homemade Mac n Cheese (Made with wagon wheel pasta)

Desert:

• Brownies (with star candy sprinkles on top)

Beverages:

• Sparkling Grape Juice

As a kid I always wanted sparkling grape juice for special occasions but my Mom would never buy it. I thought this would be fun for the girls so I also bought plastic wine glasses!

Total Expenses:

• Brownie Mix – $1 (Kroger)
• Sparkling Grape Juice – $3.49 (Kroger)
• Pack of 6 Plastic Wine Glasses – $1 (Dollar Tree)

Total Food Expense: $5.49

This may seem like a lot of food but we’ll eat the leftovers for a couple days.

Decorations

As far as decorations go I didn’t go too crazy. Kailyn and I made several construction paper hearts with crinkled tissue paper border. We also made one huge tissue paper heart that she hung on the front door. I think I’ll probably string these together with ribbon and hand above the table.

The stuff I did buy was:

• Red Table Cloth – $1 (Dollar Tree)
• Heart Shaped Candy Holder – $1 (Dollar Tree)

Grand Total Decorations: $2

Fancy Attire

No, I didn’t spend any money on clothes for our little dinner but this is supposed to be a fancy dinner. So, the girls will have to dress up in one of their many play dresses.

These are my picks:

I will wear the one and only dress that I own. (It’s comfy and very casual.)

Valentine’s Day Gifts

Originally I was just going to buy them each a box of heart shaped chocolates. Then I entered into the Dollar Tree and lost control. (Darn it.)

Now, after dinner they will each get a little goodie basket. Here are the contents and how much they cost.

Valentines Baskets (all from Dollar Tree):

• Pink Basket – $1
• Filler Grass – $1
• Coloring Book – $1
• Princess Crown – $1
• 2 Packs of Sweethearts – $1
• Squishy Rubber Toy – $1
• Fun Dip Suckers – $1
• Box of Chocolates – $1
• Rose Marshmallow Sucker – $1
• Miscellaneous Candy/Small Toys – Left Over From Kailyn’s Birthday Party

Total Basket: $9 x 2 = $18

Total Expenses

In addition to this I also bought two bags of Valentine’s candy at $1 each.

The total expenses come to:

• Food/Beverages: $5.49
• Decorations: $2
• Baskets: $18
• Candy: $2

Grand Total: $27.49 plus tax

I went over my $20 budget but it’s still not too bad. Now I’m ready for Friday to roll around so that we can have our fancy dinner.

What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?