Valentine’s links and favorites

(Graphic courtesy of Until Then graphics.)

I admit it. I love Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s because of all the pink and heart shapes. 🙂 No, not really. Well, I do love those…but I’ve mentioned before I love “special” days, days to do a little something different, days to have an excuse to show someone you care. Not that you need an excuse….doing so on “ordinary” days is special, too.

We’ve always celebrated Valentine’s Day as a family, not just as a couple (though I like the romantic part, too!). We don’t exchange gifts — there is no need for that, and it is sandwiched in between Christmas and a birthday, so we don’t need to be spending the money. It’s usually pretty simple: I make a nice dinner and heart-shaped cupcakes; my husband and I exchange cards; I get cards for the kids. Some years I do more.

I was inspired by Semicolon’s Love Links, Lists, and Quotes to post some of my own favorite quotes, poems, love songs, etc. So here goes:

Love poems:

To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet.
How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barret Browning.
The Blue Robe by Wendell Berry.
They Sit Together on the Porch by Wendell Berry.
The Blue Bowl by Blanche Bane Kuder.
O, Wert Thou In The Cauld Blast by Robert Burns.
St .Valentine’s Day by Edgar Guest.
Teamwork by Richard Armour:

A splendid team, my wife and I:
She washes dishes, and I dry.
I sometimes pass her back a dish
To give another cleansing swish.
She sometimes holds up to the light
A glass I haven’t dried just right.
But mostly there is no complaint,
Or it is courteous and faint,
For I would never care to see
The washing job consigned to me,
And though the things I dry still drip,
She keeps me for companionship.

From Odgen Nash:

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it.
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

Love Quotes:

• Quotes about love for Valentine’s Day.

• Christian quotes about love.

• C. S. Lewis on love.

• From Jane Eyre: “To be together is for us to be at once as free as solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.”

• “A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.” –Joseph Addison.

• “Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest of life; with a bad woman, it is a tempest in the harbour.” — J.P. Senn

• From A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens: “”You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. . . .”

Love songs:

“The Way You Look Tonight”
“Someone to Watch Over Me.”
“Unchained Melody”
“Star of the County Down”
“All I Ask of You”:

One of my favorite YouTube videos: scenes from different films set to “My Heart Will Go On” by the Irish Tenors. Love their harmony here!

Single on Valentine’s Day:

Singleness.
Valentine’s Day single?

Fun stuff:

Corny Valentine Jokes.
If you are a fan of the TV series Lost, you’d probably like these Lost-based Valentines.

Pearls of wisdom from Grandpa on having a long, happy marriage:

Whether a man winds up with the nest egg or a goose egg depends a lot on the kind of chick he marries.

Too many couples marry for better or for worse, but not for good.

When a man marries a woman, they become one. The trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Trouble in marriage also often starts when a man gets so busy earning his salt that he forgets his sugar.

If a man has enough “horse sense” to treat his wife like a thoroughbred, she will never be an old nag.

Miscellaneous:

John 3:16 Valentine.
Valentine smoothies.
Your Divine Valentine.