Planning an adult Valentine’s Day party is a bit of a no-brainer. Invite a lot of couples, have a few drinks, decorate with red. Done, right? Yes, and no. You want to put a little more thought into it than that and it’s good to have some games to keep things lively. If you are inviting several couples, there are many fun activities you can plan.

First, how about the “what’s this item” game? Fill a paper bag with a variety of new undergarments. These should be both men’s and women’s garments and can include anything from a bra to a lace teddy to a jock strap. Each couple feels around in the bag, not on the outside, as this one requires hands on effort. They make a list of what they think is in the bag. You can tell people how many items are in the bag, but that’s it. So you might say, there are 10 items in the bag, what are they? Once all the lists are made, pour the bag’s contents out on a table. Let everyone go through the items and see who has the most number of items right. The winning couple gets, you guessed it, the bag of goodies.

You can create a drinking game at the party that requires you take a drink whenever someone kisses you. The kiss can be from the other gender or the same sex, and anytime anyone kisses you anywhere, you have to take a drink or really get things going, from a shot glass. Create a dartboard with balloons. Cut cardboard into a heart shape and staple red inflated balloons to the dartboard and let people take a shot at breaking a heart. Be sure to have plenty of inflated balloons on hand to replace the ones that get broken.

If your party involves a meal, make it a potluck and make it interesting. Tell everyone that the food they bring must be red. Whatever it is, it must be red. This can create some interesting dishes. Certainly, someone can bring lasagna or someone else can bring red velvet cake. And you’ll always get someone who takes this opportunity to make jello. What about a salad? That must be radicchio. Or someone could bring strawberries for desert. Assign someone the task of bringing the bread and see what happens.

For a little fun event, consider a scavenger hunt where your guests must head out into the neighborhood or on the town for many Valentine’s Day items. Your list might include things like a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, a red heart shaped Mylar balloon, one red rose, a stuffed Cupid or a kid’s Valentine card. You can send the couples out as teams, or pit the men against the women. Be sure to include something that requires photo proof, like “kiss one stranger on the arm” or “give love advice to a complete stranger”.

If your party goers all know each other well, it’s OK to play a simple game of “truth or dare”. You might impose rules on the game, such as all the “truth” questions must originate from the college years, particularly fun if this group of friends met in college or must be about the current spouse. Keep the “dare” challenges clean if you think your group would prefer that or by all means, keep them racy, if that’s fun too.

It’s important for families to show their love for one another, so what better time than Valentine’s Day to play some games, engage in some fun activities, all designed to show each other love and support?

One fun activity is all about giving each other “snaps” for being who they are. Over the course of the year, mom and dad, and the kids as well, can add “snaps” to a special jar or containers. These “snaps” might include things like “dad helped me build my pinewood derby car” or “Joey read books to his sister each night without complaint”. Read these little slips of good things, thank each other for caring and empty the jar to start it again for another year.

At dinner on Valentine’s night, have each family member tell others why they love them. What about dad made mom love him? Why does Joey love his sister? What about sissy is special to dad? It might seem a little corny at first, but in the end everyone will enjoy hearing wonderful, positive things about themselves.

One fun family game involves family trivia. This game is particularly fun if the children are a bit older and there are at least two children in the family. Mom or dad creates a trivia game that looks something like this. There will be a series of index cards with a bit of family trivia on each card. Someone draws a card and tries to answer the question correctly. If correct, they get a point. The person with the most points at the end of the game gets a prize or extra chocolate syrup on their dessert. Some questions might be things like this:
*Which one of us suffered a broken leg at the age of 8?
*Which of us, at the age of 3, flushed an entire box of Tide down the toilet?
*Which of us snuck into mom and dad’s room every night until he or she was 6 years old?

At a certain age, children begin to enjoy preparing meals for mom and dad. For a fun Valentine’s activity, the children could be asked to prepare a meal for mom and dad. Ideally, this would be breakfast in bed and could include foods that are traditional “romantic” foods like strawberries and chocolate or whatever the kids want to make. They might even like to prepare a special Valentine’s Day menu and let mom and dad choose off the menu. This would be a fun tradition to start as an annual event on Valentine’s Day.

Consider a fun family game of “hidden hearts”. In this game, children are given clues to find chocolate hearts hidden around the house. The clues can be easy or more complicated to figure out depending on the ages of the children. If one or more children are very young, mom and dad can help them with the clues. When they find the hearts, they can eat them. But mom or dad, remember where you hid the hearts and be sure to count how many are found, so there aren’t any left to get ugly in the house!

Finally, a fun family activity around Valentine’s Day is to make cards for other people. Have the kids make handprint cards for the grandparents or have the kids make cards for their friends. Handmade cards can be so much more meaningful than the store bought kind and kids learn a lot from the experience of putting their hearts, literally into making the card for others.