Love Doesn't Cost A Thing

Just because you're in a relationship does not mean you have to spend a lot of money on your significant other in order to show that you care.

Constantly buying material goods like: clothing, jewelry, shoes, cars, etc. are all great presents, but at the end of the day--are any of those items necessary? Will you truly get satisfaction out of the latest Jessica Simpson heels from Nordstrom's that your boyfriend bought you for Valentine's Day? If your answer is yes, then you probably aren't interested in this blog.

Receiving inexpensive gifts from your partner doesn’t mean they love you any less. Perhaps the reason they buy you material goods in the first place is because they are too scared to get creative. Buying something that's already a finished product like clothing or jewelry is safe. Whereas creating something from scratch can be intimidating, especially if you are testing your "creative juices" for the first time.

But the beautiful thing about getting creative is that you are the inventor and no one can tell you what you've created is wrong.

A good place to start is by collecting memorabilia from your relationship. Think in terms of movie ticket stubs, pictures, programs from plays you’ve seen together and images that remind you of them. If your partner has ever been written about or photographed in a newspaper, those are also great items to collect. After you’ve gathered a substantial amount of items you’ll be able to organize a scrapbook filled with images that symbolize your partner. Anyone’s heart would melt if they saw how someone took so much time to put something like a scrapbook together.

If your partner loves to cook and experiment with food, search around the internet for quirky recipes that you think they would be interested in making and put together a personal cookbook.

You also can’t fail by going to a local arts and crafting store like A.C. Moore. There you can finds hundreds of crafty items from designing glass vases, t-shirts, wreaths, pictures, mirrors, clocks, baskets, drawings, paintings and much more. Items at arts and crafting stores can be made from scratch or can be in pre-packaged “tool kits.” For example, if you want to tie-dye a shirt you can buy the shirt and paint separately, or you can by a tie-dying kit, which includes everything plus directions to make the process easier for you. This means there are no excuses for not knowing how to be creative.

Recently, I was blown away by the creativity of my boyfriend who gave me pillowcases as a present. At first I was confused about why he would give me such a random gift. Then when I unfolded them I saw drawings done in fabric-marker on each pillowcase so I laid them out on the ground. The first pillowcase was a drawing of a stick-figure boy talking into a can tied to a string. The string flows to the end of the pillowcase and continues onto the second pillowcase and leads to a drawing of a stick-figure girl holding a can to her ear. My boyfriend and I have a long-distance relationship right now and talking on the phone at night before we go to sleep is a big ritual of ours. These pillowcases could not have symbolized our late-night “pillow-talk” conversations any better.

You see once you get the hang of thinking about your significant other in light of who they are inside, what their personality is and what their interests are, you will have a better eye for grabbing onto the things that have a lot of meaning in your relationship. Material items can be a nice gesture on occasion, but it is the time you put into what you give to your partner and the thought that counts much more than the price tag.