Heart or Wallet?

I’m typically horrible about Valentine’s Day. Vanessa and I agreed early into dating that we weren’t going to do anything for the holiday. For her, that meant nothing big, but acknowledge it somehow. For me, that meant nothing, period.

photocredit: flickr/catbeurnier

This year, I decided to do a little. I still maintain that the holiday is primarily an attempt by the greeting card, chocolate, cheap stuffed animal and restaurant industries to get some positive sales numbers early into the year so the Christmas buying season has some padding. However, trying to do just a little something more to show your wife you love her is not a bad idea.

I executed a two-tier plan. Which approach would be more appreciated?

From the heart…

I crafted Vanessa’s redesigned site over the summer. She loves it, even though she doesn’t have the time to do much with it. She has mentioned in the past that she would like to post reviews of recipes that we try out on her site. While she could just write a normal blog post, put it into a foodie category and tag it up a bit, I wanted to make it easier and thus more likely for her to convert “I’d like to write…” to “I do write…”.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working bit-by-bit on a recipe review system within WordPress for her. <geek>A custom post type with a few custom taxonomies.</geek> She’d fire up her browser and navigate to her admin panel. Click “Add Recipe Review” then just answer the questions. Where was the original recipe at? What modifications did she make? Her review, her rating, a picture, etc. A custom category set lists the various meal times and holidays to select when within the day and within the year (if applicable). Lastly, a custom tag set allows her to enter each ingredient that she chooses, so later she can easily search all of the reviews in the system based on one. For example, when Johnson Backyard Garden is selling 20 pounds of tomatoes again, she can easily pull up all “tomato” reviews and plan how to use the 20 pounds worth.

I was able to finish the backend and get the frontend functional enough in time to show her today.

Once we get it looking like she wants and she has a few reviews in the system, we’ll show it off. Likewise, I’m thinking about packaging it up as a WordPress plugin.

From the wallet…

During my last HEB trip, I picked up a couple of stuffed animals (based on what Olivia and Catalina would like), some hand-dipped chocolate- and nut-covered strawberries and some chocolate-covered cherries. This morning, before finishing this post, I arranged it all on the table so she’ll see it as soon as she comes downstairs.

No real thought into this until I was at HEB.

What about a note?

One of Vanessa’s friends has a boyfriend who writes some type of love letter/note everyday. Everyday. If you or your significant other does this, wow. I love Vanessa. Without doubt, I give myself completely to her and she is my world. I struggle, though, figuring out a unique way of saying that in a note. I have this mental block against writing a love letter that says the same thing as something I told her previously or written to her before. Ladies, I’m sure you can give me a little guidance here on if that matters or not, but let’s just say I’m not the poetic love note type.

Which won?

That has to wait. As I finish, she’s upstairs getting ready. We shall see.

Either way…

Whether it is February 14th or May 19th or November 28th, showing our significant others and our families that we love them, care about them and want to treat them is always a good idea. While I’m all for bucking the cultural overindulgence of a small religious feast day-that-is-no-longer-generally-a-feast-day into the de facto day of love.