Frugal Valentine's Day Tip #3: Give her rocks

My boy Sean married his until-then girlfriend Paaras last year. I gotta say, the homie chose well. Paaras is smart. She's gorgeous. She cooks, even for me when I come to town (can't wait till next week). I've never seen her complain or disrespect him and even though we got drunk together on a few occasions when he needed to escape her wrath (sorry for outing you, kid) he knew and I knew that he was happier to go home to her than I was to go home alone.

Sean cherishes Paaras and she him, so whatever advice he has to give on a great Valentine's gift for the wife is worth blogging about. So what's his suggestion? Get her rocks.

No, not shiny, mined somewhere in South Africa and marked up a zillion percent at retail rocks. Polished rocks. Check it out:

I got Paaras some polished rocks. Wrote past special moments & provided extra rocks to add new memories.

And how'd she like it?

I still get excited to add more things to the rocks! Love it love it! Sean is the best!

So just how frugal were the rocks? Sean says he bought the rocks at Michael's, but any craft store will do. They cost about $15. The silver pen he wrote their fondest memories on was $4, so total for the basics: $19.

He did go the extra mile though: he paid $60 for a special dish from Tiffany's to display the rocks in; it came wrapped in blue paper. Adding that would bring the total cost to close to $80, still relatively frugal but far from $19. That said, I'm sure a completely appropriate dish or other accoutrement could be had for much less and I'm guessing Paaras cares way more for the rocks and the memories they represent than the Tiffany dish.

Image: Suat Eman/freedigitalimages.net