Put some snap in your Valentine’s Day Gift with a Love Basket created just for your favorite Sweetheart! You’ll enjoy the results, and your lover will know you mean it when she hears those three precious words. Love Baskets are created once and used for a lifetime. Just start with a medium sized basket, lid is optional, but the handle is necessary. You’ll want a nice sturdy handle!

Step #1 – Line your Love Basket

The liner is important, because you’ll use the liner often for other purposes. One of the best liner choices is a patterned cloth in a smooth weave with a hemmed edge. This can be one layer or reversible, but you’ll want something nice and soft. Remember your lover’s tastes when choosing the pattern, but think romance.

Step #2 – Love Basket Essentials

A set of crystal goblets meant for two. If by some chance you have a set from your wedding, you can use those. Or if not, buy a nice set of stemmed and fluted goblets from the store and tie a pretty ribbon around the stem. Add a bottle of your favorite bubbly (non-alcoholic grape juice is a nice alternative) and some white linen napkins. You now have the essentials for your basket, everything from this point on is optional, but you’ll want to consider filling it up.

Step #3 – Setting the Scene

Table service and flatware for two is always a nice additional touch. You never know when that scene might include a wonderful menu to share. There are some nice simple dishes you could add to your basket at any discount center, just select the ones you find most appealing, add silverware and a sharp knife with a cover and you’re set for almost any dining experience.

Step #4 – Ambiance?

Candles are a wonderful touch. Scented candles in a glass jar add an extra special ambiance to your love basket. Perhaps you’d like to include an aroma that brings back memories of your first night together. I’d almost bet it’s vanilla. Take a chance! Add in bath beads, salts, and bubbles if you expect to make a romantic evening of your Love Basket experience.

Step #5 – Frivolous Accessories

A slinky negligee for her, perhaps some boxers for him? Matching silk robes? Perhaps you’ll want to skip the clothing and just get matching top hats? Whatever accessories you might choose, consider your personal choices and think from your lover’s perspective. What might she appreciate?

Step #6 – Yummies

These can be anything from a full five course meal to decadent snacks, but I’d recommend for the first basket, you consider chocolates, gourmet foods, or delicate confections. Consider your plans for the evening and buy goodies accordingly. Perhaps dried fruits dipped in chocolate with an accompaniment of cheese and bread? Be original, be decadent, be romantic.

Step #7 – The Gift

Diamonds are nice. Sapphires twinkle. Rubies and Emeralds leave a lasting impression. If you haven’t thought of the gift for your favorite love, this is the moment to seriously consider the gift you’ll include in the Love Basket. No, the basket itself is the wrapping, not the ultimate gift. Wow your lady with diamonds!

If you haven’t decided what to give your love for Valentine’s Day yet, this is an awesome and reusable gift. Just refill for special evenings all year long. The Love Basket might even become a romantic tradition.

Jan Verhoeff enjoys promoting business, but there’s always a moment to take a day or a weekend off. Visit http://janverhoeff.com and sign up for Jan’s News and Updates for FREE marketing and promotional ideas.

Disillusioned by Marriage Relationship Phases

Every relationship goes through specific phases of existence. As your relationship slips from the honeymoon phase into the comfortable recognition of differences and then on to the phase of painful compromise and negotiation, you may not realize these are normal steps. You may feel vulnerable and at risk, perhaps you don’t recognize the sign, only the feeling that something is wrong.

Destruction of Intimacy and Connection

As you slip beyond the early phases of comfort zone your relationship slides down the slippery slope of avoidance, where you step away from failure by avoiding issues that must be dealt with, allowing them to erode intimacy and cause you to feel lonely. A feeling of being avoided by your spouse may leave you susceptible to another person whose interest in your feelings appears deeper.

Passion Fades to Mundane Tolerance

The intensity of burning passion becomes glowing embers of smoldering frustration as the light fades from the relationship you remember. Passion naturally levels off, and you may find the practical aspects of loving another person aren’t as charming as the romance you first knew. When spontaneity is replaced with drudgery and responsibility, your relationship may not have enough strength to keep you burning bright, so what do you do then? Your vulnerability becomes pessimism that it’s all over.

Friendships Begin to Fulfill Emotional Needs

You’d rather spend your time with those ‘special friends’ than with your spouse. Your friend provides for your emotional needs, giving you the warm fuzzies your spouse used to provide. All your recreation time is spent with that friend, and you begin to feel closer to the friend than to your spouse. Your spouse has been replaced by a friend who no longer compliments your relationship with your spouse. The charge you get from being with your friend is greater than the time you spend with your spouse and you know you’re vulnerable.

Your Relationship Triggers Negative Responses

You may be surrounded by negative relationships, empty and void of loyalty, commitment, and fidelity. Your experience of life may have changed and there are more divorced couples in your life than married. Your spouse or you may have single friends, and your single friends probably outnumber your married friends. Couple time diminishes and you find you’re spending your time out with single friends looking for openings and opportunities. You’re at risk for marital failure.

Where can you turn, if not to your spouse?

William Clarke III takes infidelity seriously in his relationship practice. If you’re looking for answers, visit his site at http://billclarkedbaplus.com/relationships  and claim your FREE Copy of Opposites Attract: Relationships for REAL People.

As we recognize our own insufficiencies we can appreciate those who provide solutions. The most significant differences may offer the most comfort in a marriage. As a single person, you may have lacked the ability to manage money, but your spouse may have a knack for saving cash. You may not have the ability inside you to parent children and love them proficiently, but your spouse may have that deep love for children.

Foundation

Together you make the perfect foundation for a family, and yet alone you may not have the ability to stand solid against the winds of time. Find your source within the dynamics of the relationship, what are your strengths and how does your spouse strengthen you?

Structure

How is your fabric woven together with your spouse. You may be going opposite directions, but the strongest fabrics have fibers woven perpendicular to each other. Is that your strength? Are you able to pull together to make a stronger life than you are able to live apart?As you begin to acknowledge and celebrate your differences, the connections may come together for strength, foundation, and connection. The structure of your lives may provide the strength necessary to build a relationship that keeps you both moving forward. Your common ground may be the strength of your differences.

Have you considered how you might focus on what you have together rather than what you’d have separate?

What are your common grounds for marriage?

William Clarke III takes infidelity seriously in his relationship practice. If you’re looking for answers, visit his site at http://plusrelationships.com/relationships  and claim your FREE Copy of Opposites Attract: Relationships for REAL People.