How to Have a Champagne Valentines Day on a Recession Budget

So Valentines Day is coming up. The day of love and another chance to spend extra money that you don’t have. Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be. Valentines day is supposed to be about spending time with the one you love and that shouldn’t have to cost a lot of money. Here are some tips that can help you save money on your Valentines Day plans this year.

Celebrate on a different day

This will save you the most money if you can get your significant other to agree to do this. Since the holiday is supposed to be about expressing and sharing your love, it shouldn’t depend on the particular day. By going to dinner the day before or the day after, you can often avoid paying for the higher-priced menus some restaurants bring out for special holidays. Not to mention you will avoid the crowds since half the world will be going out for dinner on Valentines Day (and it will be easier to find a babysitter)

Also, chocolate and other Valentines Day candy is usually half off the day after the holiday and really, what woman wouldn’t want twice as much chocolate??

Find dining discounts online

There are so many restaurant discounts online that can save you 50% or more on your meal. There are many different ways to find them too. If you have an entertainment book you can find some great discounts in there. Many restaurants have coupons available right on their own websites. Or you can simply do an online search of “[your city] restaurant coupons”. You may also find that some restaurants offer a special discount on certain weeknights or at certain times. Dining coupons often have a restriction that they can’t be used on holidays, which is why celebrating on a different day is also helpful.

Eat out earlier

Restaurants’ lunch prices are usually significantly lower than their dinner prices, which means you can get the same food for a lot less money if you are willing to eat a little earlier. Some restaurants serve lunch until 4pm so you can do an early dinner and save money (while also avoiding crowds). Lunch portions tend to be slightly smaller than dinner portions, but they are still usually pretty good sized. I personally don’t usually finish an entire restaurant meal anyway and it just ends up going bad in my fridge.

Eat dinner in and go out for dessert

Dinner for 2 can get quite expensive, but dessert for 2 can easily be had for under $20. Try making a candlelit dinner at home and then venturing out for dessert afterwards. The Melting Pot has a very affordable chocolate fondue dessert option that is fun and delicious. You can also get ice cream or go to any typical restaurant and only order dessert. Since it’s so much cheaper than dinner, you could even order 3 desserts and share them all!

Do something different

Always go to dinner and a movie on Valentines Day? Try something different this year- something that you’ve never done, or at least never done together. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it can be something simple like indoor miniature golf, bowling or ice skating! The point is to do something new and be together. A new activity is a lot more memorable than the same old routine. Even if you try ice skating and you fall, it should create some laughs that will last a while. (Use the same ideas mentioned above for saving money on dining to find discounts for these kinds of things too.)

Look for the small things

Small tokens of love can go a long way. Almost any wife/mom would LOVE it if their husbands would offer to clean the house and let them relax for an evening. Something like that wouldn’t cost any money, but would be GREATLY appreciated- maybe even more so than dinner and flowers. Maybe offer to give your wife a massage or draw her a bath with candles. The key is to find what your partner loves and try to give them that. It doesn’t have to cost a lot because it really is the thought that counts.

Celebrating Valentines Day, or any other holiday or special occasion for that matter, doesn’t have to break the bank. Sincerely showing someone how much you love them will go so much farther than spending a lot of money on one evening.

Essential Excellence featured in How's Business Newsletter

We got a blurb in the How's Business Newsletter. Check it out here: http://www.spokanehowsbusiness.com/newsletter/currentStory.asp I'm excited about all the media mentions we've been getting. Time to get working on those press releases! Essential Excellence www.essentialexcellence.com

Essential Excellence on MSNBC!!

The previously mentioned article that first appeared on entrepreneur.com has now been picked up my MSNBC, the Washington Post and Fox Business! Check out the links!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28735902/

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/on-topic/small-business/real-world-cost-cutting-practices/

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http://biz.yahoo.com/entrepreneur/090113/199476_id.html?.v=1

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www.essentialexcellence.com

I'm in an article on entrepreneur.com!

About a month ago I was interviewed for an article about saving money on business expenses. The article recently posted and there is a section about Essential Excellence and my saving money tactics! Check out the article at http://www.entrepreneur.com/management/operations/article199476.html.

Website Remodel

So I decided that my website needed an updated layout- mostly because I had more pages to add and it wouldn't have worked well with my previous layout. Anyhow, redesigning the template wasn't too difficult, but there was one issue that kept coming up weird when I tried to preview the design in a browser. I use Dreamweaver and it's frustrating when the site looks one way in the design screen and different in a browser. It's even more frustrating when it looks right in one browser (like Firefox) and is wrong in another (Internet Explorer). As frustrating as it is, I can usually find a fix for it, which helps me if/when it happens in the future. Also, I was able to upload a recent Powerpoint presentation I created and put it on my front page. It took me a bit to figure it out, but I was able to find a great website that will host it for me and give me the code to embed it in my site. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out :)

A new baby boy and some sun

Some friends of ours just had their first baby on Thursday- a little boy. It was exciting to go see the baby in the hospital- I couldn't believe how tiny he was! The baby actually came about 3 weeks early, so his nursery wasn't even ready for him! So another friend and I decided to paint and decorate their nursery as a surprise to the mom. Even though we were working on the room all day, it was actually a lot of fun! I felt like I was on an HGTV show. Here's what the nursery looked like when we were finished. And on another note, we finally had some sun the other day after many cloudy and snowy days. It was really funny because my dog took advantage of the little bit of sun coming through the window and decided to take a nap in it. The funny thing is that she never sleeps on the floor- only in her bed. But apparently she really needed some sun. Hope to see some more sun in the future! :)

My first presentation and my co-worker

Yesterday I got an e-mail informing me that I was selected to give a 5 minute presentation about my business at a home based business class I was scheduled to attend. Last time I was at the class, which was about a month ago, I decided that I needed to put together a brochure in case I got selected in the future. Well I didn't and here I was now scrambling to put something together. It's a good thing I work well under pressure. I was able to put together a Powerpoint presentation (which is one of my specialties) for the meeting within a couple hours. I gave the presentation and it went pretty well- I thought. Plus the nice thing is that I have it already done for future presentations. I am also going record a narration onto it and post it on my site so others can see it. My next step for marketing materials is to make a brochure. I wanted to introduce my co-worker, even though she doesn't so much work as she does sleep all day and occasionally whine at me to let her up on my lap. She is my beagle Abby. Sometimes she has doggie dreams and she woofs and moves her paws in her sleep. It's pretty funny! She keeps me entertained :) Here are a couple of pictures of her "work day" yesterday: