family DIY projects

25 Family Things to Do on Valentine’s Day

What better way to show your family you love them by spending the day doing something fun together!

Many of us are looking for things to do on Valentine’s Day, so look no further!

Here is a list of 25 fun things to do on Valentine’s day, and with the whole family, of course!

Fun Things to Do

Bake Valentine’s Cookies: All you really need is heart-shaped cookie cutters and a baking crew and you can bake lots of cookies! Save some decorating for the littler ones so they can participate as well.

Arrange a Valentine’s Day Cookie Exchange: Baking lots of cookies? Then arrange a cookie exchange with nearby extended family or even with the neighbors on your street!

Cupcake Decorating: Bake cupcakes and leave the decorating up to the group! Each person should decorate one cupcake for every person in the family and if there’s extras, decorate some for friends!

Bake Sale: Putting the family to work while making a few bucks never hurt anyone! Perhaps it can pay for a nice evening out!

Conversation Heart Scavenger Hunt: With all of the different messages on different colors, this could get interesting! Specify what message to look for and on what color.

Guess That Chocolate: This can be a fun game. Before you bite into the chocolate, you must write down your guess as to what filling you think will be inside, and write the correct answer next to it. Most correct answers wins. No peeking at the guide!

Talk About Love: This is especially important for kids as the media floods their tiny brains with what Valentine’s Day is “about.” Talk as a family what love really is, and that it’s not about buying things for the one you love, but rather spending time together.

Throw a Red and White Party: Throw a little V-Day party for the family! Everyone must wear red and white, and most foods and beverages served should be Valentine’s themed!

Valentine Crafts: Cut a bunch of different sized hearts out of construction paper, supply everyone with glue and various other craft items. What will everyone come up with?

Candy Crafts: Earlier I had mentioned gumdrop wreath–great idea! Also, think about making candy necklaces and mosaic art with those conversation hearts!

Paper Mache Candle Holders: Pick up some cheap, glass candle holders from the dollar store along with tissue paper in Valentine’s colors. Mix equal parts flour and water and begin!

Make Decorations: Whether you make a gumdrop wreath or garland out of paper hearts, add a personal Valentine’s Day touch to your home using decorations made by the whole family!

Valentine’s Breakfast: It’s understandable that Valentine’s Day often falls on a work or school day, so wake up an hour earlier and make a nice breakfast for the family to enjoy together. Talk about how you will be spending Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Picnic: If you’re lucky and Valentine’s Day falls on a nice weekend, have a picnic in the park! This is more so for the warmer, southern states, of course as it tends to still be pretty cold in the north! Indoor picnics can be just as fun!

Valentine’s Dinner: Typically the whole family is home by dinner, so make a nice, candlelit, Valentine’s dinner for the family to enjoy together!

Take a Family Portrait: Get all dressed up in your Valentine’s Day best and take a family portrait together!

Handmade Gifts Exchange: Rather than buying the typical Valentine’s Day gifts at a store, make them by hand instead! It’s much more special.

Who Do You Love?: While the whole family is in each other’s company, go around the room asking each person to name one person they love and just what it is they love about them!

Family Coupons: This is a fun, homemade gift idea. Make a coupon book and gift it to a family member. The coupons shall only be redeemable with the person who made them! (Hint hint, mom! This is a good way to get chores done!)

Salt Dough: Mix two parts flour, one part salt, and one part warm water, knead the dough, roll it out and make some crafts! You can make ornaments as keepsakes as long as you seal after baking. Bake on 250 for two to three hours, until hard. Flip once.

Decorate a Valentine’s Tree: If you made some salt dough ornaments, perfect! Fill a vase with clean(ish) twigs and branches and decorate it for the occasion. Makes a great table centerpiece for a V-Day party!

Start a Garden: Start a garden together, even if it has to start indoors!

Plant a Tree: If you are past the season of frost for your area, plant a tree outside! Watch it grow like the love in the home.

Volunteer: Not everyone is fortunate to have family to spend this nice day with, so spend time with your family while helping others, whether it’s baking some treats for the nice lady down the road or volunteering at the local food pantry.

Homemade Chocolates: Okay, so chocolate seems like a must for this holiday, but it doesn’t mean you have to buy the cliche heart-shaped boxes! Make your own. YUM!

With so many things to do on Valentine’s Day, you can really have things planned all day long!

How to Host a Family Reunion for $200

Want to host a family reunion but have a hole in your pocket? Have no fear, Gathered Again is here! This is the hotspot for cheap family reunion ideas!

The Steps

You get to a point where Skype and Facebook just doesn’t cut it for interaction with your loved ones; nothing compares to having their company! If you want a family reunion, they likely want to see you just as much, too, so step #1 in cheap family reunion ideas is to ask for help.

Step 1: Ask for Help

There are many ways one can help with the financial aspect of family reunion planning:

Donate money
Start fundraisers
Utilize crafting abilities for DIY projects: Decorations, games, favors, etc.
Make food
Bring supplies

So begin poking around your family to see in which ways they can help. Tell them your goal in setting up a family reunion, and rather than asking if the can help, lay it on thick and phrase it like this: How will you be able to help? This leaves less room to say “no.”

Step #2: Get Your Budget Organized

Grab a notebook and keep your planning organized. Start brainstorming different ways that you can save money. For each area of planning, stick to this: $50 or less, but free is best! So, first you will see which ways you can make each area free, and if free is just not an option, explore the ways you can keep the cost under $50. The main, more expensive areas of planning are:

Venue
Food/beverage
Entertainment (games, activities, etc.)
Decorations
Favors/family reunion swag

Here are a few money-saving ideas to get you started:

Go paperless: Rather than sending invites and other communications by mail, eliminate the cost of postage and supplies by sending everything by email. If some family members don’t have internet access, utilize messengers in the family who live nearby. This alone will easily save you $20 or more.
Backyard family reunion: Using your backyard or another family member’s backyard will eliminate the cost of a venue. If nobody has a big enough backyard, consider using pavilions at a local park, which are usually free for first-come-first-serve, or reservable for a very small fee.
Potluck: Rather than taking on the cost of food completely on your own, spread it out over the entire family by having a potluck picnic instead!
DIY games: There’s plenty of games that require little or no supplies, such as tug-o-war or ring toss. You can easily make your own games like cornhole or put together a scavenger hunt!
DIY T-shirts: T-shirts can be a big expense, so rather than having a bunch of shirts screen-printed and footing that bill, either ask each person to bring $x.xx per person to pay for the shirt as reimbursement, or have everyone bring their own shirt, and provide supplies to decorate their own. Keep in mind that these can double as the favor if need be.
DIY favors: This is the least necessary expense but if there’s money leftover in the budget, you can use it to either buy cheap favors, or purchase supplies to make your own. Even turning it into an activity for each person to make their own favor is a good idea. Example: Sand art. The small, corked bottles are cheap, colored sand is cheap, and all you would have to do is hand make some tags to affix after the bottles are corked: (last name) family reunion 2015.

Step #3: Implement Your Plan!

You may find yourself running into roadblocks and going back to the drafting table, but it’s okay because you’re allowing yourself plenty of time for planning, right?

Stay up to date with that tasks you need to complete by utilizing a our reunion planning checklist. This will make sure you’ve allowed enough time for each task and that you don’t get stuck with last minute costs because you forgot something.

There are plenty of cheap family reunion ideas all around you; you just have to find them! Now to start asking your family for help…it’s time to be on your way to planning this family reunion!

11 Creative Family Reunion Banner Ideas

“We are family!” Well, you won’t have to scream it if you have a whole bunch of things that scream it for you. The family eyes, the family badonkadonk, matching t-shirts, oh, and banners, of course!

Speaking of banners, they are a completely necessary decoration for any big event, especially family reunions. Family reunion banners not only look great, but they let people know that you’re serious. Family reunions are some serious business from the planning to the traveling and gathering!

DIY Banners to Make with Your Family

There is no single way that is the right way to make family reunion banners. It all depends on your family, the venue, and, of course, your budget. If you need some ideas to inspire you, here’s some great ideas for family reunion banners:

Handprints: Create a banner with the family name, and lay it out at the beginning of the reunion for each family member to put their handprints on upon entering. Fly it with pride as soon as you have all handprints!

The (family name) footprint: Forget carbon footprints, this is family business! Similar to the handprint banner idea, this one will involve everyone’s footprints! Don’t forget the wipes!

Burlap banner: Using burlap material, cut out squares, and using a single, bold letter on each square, spell out the family name. Don’t feel like making one yourself? Check out Etsy to have a custom one made for your reunion!

Coat of arms: If your family has a coat of arms, put this on the banner! Family-related and sophisticated!

Picture clothesline: String a clothesline between two poles, posts, or trees, and have each family member bring a family photo or two to pin on the clothesline as they enter.

Flag: Using a bedsheet and a long, metal rod, make a flag for the family reunion! Use finger paint, food coloring, puffy paints, spray paint, anything that will stick.

Tie-dye: Find a white background boring on a banner? Tie-dye the banner first, then add your message! I’m sure there is a hippy or two in your family somewhere…

Your family defined: Using single words and colored paint, paint words all over the banner that describe your family, avoiding dark colors. Once this dries, in darker paint or in black, paint your message, family name, or whatever you prefer.

Names: Similar to the idea above, paint the name of every family member using colored paint, avoiding dark colors. Once the names dry, paint your message, family name, or whatever you prefer.

The bigger, the better: Want your banner to be seen from outer space? Here’s how! Using poster boards, spell out your family name letter by letter a with a big, block letter on each poster board. On each poster board, write other words in a lighter color that begin with that letter. For example, the “B” in Bellinger: Beautiful, brainy, bright, blessed, blissful, etc.

Professional: If you do not wish to physically make one yourself, there are many companies that would love to compete for your business. All you have to do is submit a design, and they’ll deliver exactly what you want.

Now that you have a few great ideas for making family reunion banners, it’s probably a good time to get started. The more tasks you knock out in advance, the better!

DIY Family Reunion T-shirt Ideas

Throwing a family reunion almost always means t-shirts for the family! Wearing family reunion t-shirts is a great way to involve everyone in the reunion and make them feel like a part of your bg group. You’re having a family reunion, and the world should know!

Matching t-shirts with silly sayings on them is a given for family reunion t-shirt ideas. Here, I will focus on giving you a few creative and unique family reunion t-shirt ideas!

Puffy paints: Set up a table with various shirt sizes and many colors of puffy paint and let everyone make their own creation!
Iron-on letters and pictures: Setting up a table with various types of iron-ons can really make for some fun and funky t-shirts!
Tie-dye: Whether you tie-dye the shirts or have everyone do their own, this is great for a 60’s themed family reunion!
Mystery maker: Everyone draws a name out of a hat and has to make a shirt for that person.
All kids: Kids make the shirts for themselves and for everyone else! That should keep them busy for a bit.
Men vs. Woman: Woman make shirts for the men and men make shirts for the women. Keep it nice!
Kids vs. Adults: Adults make shirts for the kids and kids make shirts for the adults. Definitely makes for super cute pictures!
Squirt paints: Typically for kids, but adults can have fun, too! This is basically a paint-filled water gun fight with white family reunion t-shirts!
Handprints: Each family’s shirts should have the handprint of each family member on it. Get creative and make the handprints into other pictures!
Nature prints: Perfect for camping family reunions, go on a nature hike with everyone to find things that will make cool prints with paint!
Buttons, pompoms, and other fun things: Turn t-shirt making into a hot glue project using anything and everything that can be glued to a shirt!
Yarn: You can make some really cool pictures by gluing yarn down in whatever way possible.
“Code of Arms” prints: Each family should draw up a code of arms on a piece of cardboard, glue yarn along the lines of the pencil, then paint the yarn and make prints onto shirts by pressing the cardboard to the shirt. Make sure words are backward on the cardboard!
Negative images: Place letters and shapes on the shirt, spray all empty areas with paint, remove the objects and you just creative negative prints!
Make ‘em at home: Each family member makes their own shirt at home (specific criteria is up to the planner) and these shirts will be worn at the reunion!

The process of making and wearing the shirts should be a fun one, so avoid anything that you feel will cause undue stress on anyone involved. Remember that not everyone is creative or crafty and some may not wish to participate in making their own shirt, so be sure to have a backup plan for this scenario! You know your family well, so I’m sure you will come up with something that is sure to suit the group (literally)!