How to Throw an Un-Valentine Party

You step into a restaurant on Valentine’s Day and you’re blown away by all of the cloying love in the air. Even though Valentine’s Day was created to celebrate couples in love, you don’t have to be in a relationship to enjoy this pink sugar-coated holiday. A big party full of your single friends will help ease you through this time of the year when being single can be painful.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Sugar cookie dough
• Alcohol of some sort; vodka is easy to mix
• Black decorations, streamers, plates and tablecloths
• Board games
• Cookie sheet
• Valentine's Day cards, both regular and children's cards
• Pens and pencils for defacing the cards
• Ring pops of various flavors
• Strawberry or raspberry jam
• Jell-O and a plastic tablecloth
• Cooling rack
• Heart-shaped cookie cutter
• Blood orange soda or some other red mixer, like cranberry juice
• Black frosting

Setting the Mood

1. Check your romantic status. First things first, are you single? Good, read on. I can assure you that many other people are just as single as you are this time of year. And, more than likely, some of them will also be friends who are single.
2. Buy a few boxes of children’s Valentine’s Day cards and write “un-” in front of every reference to Valentine’s Day. These cards will be your invitations.
3. Pull together a list of your single friends and send invitations to your un-Valentine’s Day party. Ask them to invite other people they know to be single. The more the merrier on this attachment-free downer day. This is also the time to decide if you want people to bring food for a potluck.
4. Decorate for an un-Valentine’s Day party. Steer away from the rouges, pinks and whites that seem to seep into every corner of stores.
5. Look for black or blue decorations. Blue is a very soothing color, which should help guests of yours who might be bitter about their relationship status. Black is the new pink, which was the new black. Black has an “I’m here so deal” attitude about it, making it perfect to decorate your un-Valentine’s Day party.
6. Choose music for your party that is upbeat and gets people smiling. Think about using some big band music or Japanese pop music.
7. Buy as many ring pops as there are people at your party to create a fun party game. Make sure to buy pairs of flavors because people will be matched up according to the flavor of ring pop.

Eat Your Heart Out

8. Purchase a heart cookie cutter and two or three boxes of Jell-O mix. Avoid red-colored Jell-O if possible.
9. Make the Jell-O, according to directions, in large, flat baking pans or cookie sheets a day or two before the party. When the Jell-O has set, cut hearts out of the Jell-O and refrigerate them for the party.
10. Make bleeding heart cookies a day or two before the party. To make these cookies, make or buy sugar cookie dough. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/3 inch and cut hearts out of the dough.
11. Spread a teaspoon of strawberry or raspberry jam on half of the raw cookie dough hearts, then sandwich the rest of the hearts on top of the jam. Place these jam-filled sugar cookies onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for approximately 10 minutes at 350 degrees.
12. Remove the cookies and transfer them to a cooling rack when the cookies are golden brown and the kitchen smells of sugar cookie.
13. Frost the hearts with black or chocolate icing once the cookies are cool. This way, when the cookie is broken, the black heart will bleed.
14. Visit the liquor store and purchase some different types of alcohol. Using margarita mix and tequila or vodka and blood orange soda are easy ways to make great-tasting drinks for a lot of people.

Play Games With Their Emotions

15. Have guests blindly pick a ring pop out of a box. The flavor of their ring pop signifies who they will be paired up with to compete in the games. They must wear the ring pop, but they can’t eat it yet. People will trade rings and essentially partners once the games commence. Only the people who win the game will be allowed to keep their rings. Everyone who loses the game must trade rings with someone else so that everyone gets a new partner with every game.
16. Play the party games mentioned below or use standard board games, if you prefer. Examples of fun pre-made board games good for groups are Pictionary, Apples to Apples and Cranium.
17. Provide your guests with cheap Valentine’s cards and have them deface their own card, either by drawing silly faces or word balloons for the people depicted or by inserting their own words onto the card. Make this a contest and have everyone judge to see whose card is the most creative and funny.
18. Take out the Jell-O hearts and place them on a plastic tablecloth on the floor. The first couple to eat their Jell-O heart with their hands behind their back wins.
19. Give a prize to the couple who has stayed together the longest during the party.

Tips & Warnings

• Black decorations can be found year-round as over-the-hill party decorations. Raid that section of the party supply store, and you'll be set.
• The goal of this party is to have fun with all of your single friends on a day that is normally relegated to the loving couples. Throw out conventions and go for broke.
• Potlucks are a great way to bring people together and show off their cooking skills. And with all of the cooking or running to the store, singles won’t have much time to sigh about their lack of a significant other.
• In addition to the bleeding heart cookies, try searching online for a company that makes personalized candy hearts. One company called Despair Inc., whose Web site is listed in Resources below, makes BitterSweets, which are candy hearts with sarcastic Valentine’s sayings on them instead of the regular sweet sayings.
• You should provide a nonalcoholic drink alternative. If you use blood orange soda for the vodka, make sure to buy enough soda for everyone to have a nonalcoholic version.
• The Jell-O hearts can be messy, so mention this on the invitation. This is not the place to wear that new suit or dress.