Valentine gift baskets must absolutely, positively include at least one thing: Flowers. If you're making valentine gift baskets and you're not including valentine flowers, then you're doing it wrong. Stop, reverse, go back and start all over again.
Of course, you'll need more than just flowers to make perfect valentine gift baskets. The other standby, naturally, is chocolate. Specifically high-quality, imported dark chocolate that you spent some time picking out rather than a cruddy milk chocolate heart that you picked up on your way through the check-out at K-Mart.
Most good valentine gift baskets will include a sampling of sweets, everything from the aforementioned dark chocolate to something like almond cookies, chocolate amaretto crunch, godiva bars and the like. Be creative, put a little research in, and most imporantly, have a good idea of what she likes and what she doesn't before committing to any particular valentine gift baskets as the present of the day.
It's also worth noting that jewelry is never a bad idea with most women. You can find a pair of earrings relatively inexpensively at most department stores, or if you're willing to splurge a little, you can find boutiques that feature jewelry by local artists. It's not just about the candies and the cookies, it's about the shiny and the bling bling as well. My girlfriend enjoys almost all types of jewelry, from dangly earrings to bracelets to necklaces to brooches and pins. Put a little of that effort and know-how into your own honey's valentine gift baskets, and you'll be in her good graces for most of the year to come.
But don't forget the flowers. There's a large selection of valentine's day-appropriate flowers, so you don't have to stick with just red roses (though obviously a dozen red roses is never a bad idea. Even when it's not valentine's day, you can still pick up a bunch and bring 'em home - it's the things like that which earn you permission for the weekend in Vegas with your buddies, or those autumn Sundays in front of the TV watching the NFL. Don't forget that!)
Personally, this year I'll be going with forget-me-nots as, firstly, they're quite beautiful and smell pretty, and secondly, they mean true, enduring love. Yeah, it took me about ten minutes of googling to find the right flower for the moment, but isn't that ten minutes worth the added leeway I'll get in the coming months? From my perspective, it is. And it should be from yours as well.
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