Galentine’s 2025

I always say Christmas is my favorite holiday but I think it’s actually tied with Galentine’s Day (à la Leslie Knope). Beginning in 2020 (right before the pandemic), I started hosting a gathering to celebrate Galentine’s Day back and kept up with it most of the years since. This year, I decided to step it up a little bit (only because I recently started feeling like my pre-pandemic self) and it was my favorite Galentine’s celebration to date!

As I did with Cool People Christmas Party (which I’m just realizing I never shared on the blog!!!), I started the prep and setup in advance. I ordered some helium-filled heart-shaped balloons from Party City and I feel like they added so much to the ambiance!

For the tablescape, I started with a pretty block print tablecloth with pink florals. This gathering felt like a prime opportunity to pull out my candelabra for the centerpiece. I already had a good number of pink and red candlesticks and picked up a few more from Michael’s to fill out the candelabra. While I was at Michael’s, I picked up a “Be Mine” garland which covered up our very empty dining room wall!

As you may know, I’m in my crafting era (which I hope lasts forever) so I wanted to have a few craft options as an activity. I had a few of these Valentine’s Day-themed paint kits already on hand, and I ordered colorful tea light candles for taper candle painting (also had these on hand). The gathering brought together people from different parts and times of life so I think having an activity helped people mingle.

I always love having fresh flowers but even more so when having people over! I picked up some flowers from Trader Joe’s & Harris Teeter and put together a few arrangements. I put a couple of smaller vases on the dining table to flank the candelabra and a larger one on the coffee table.

Another activity we did was a Favorite Things Gift Exchange! Last year, we did a regular(?) gift exchange, White Elephant Style but the Favorite Things really took the gift exchange to another level. If you haven’t seen or heard about Favorite Things Gift Exchange, everyone brings multiple “copies” of their favorite item and pitches it to everyone. Then you draw numbers, similar to White Elephant, and take turns picking out. So you bring three items and leave with three items!

For my favorite things, I brought my favorite Korean sunscreens that I’ve repurchased multiple time as well as Nerds Gummy Clusters, which I’ve been telling everyone about for the last year.

For the moment, our only seating in the living room is the couch, which provides seating for 3-4 people depending on how comfortable and snuggly you are with other people. Since we were doing the Favorite Things Gift Exchange in the living room (more room to spread out & used coffee table to display all the gifts), I added some extra seats with these bamboo folding chairs.

I’ve used these a number of times since I first got them, and I love the fact that they look like normal chairs. I may keep a couple of these out for the corner pictured above until I find the right replacement for my reading/needlepointing chair.

I did not get a great picture of this but I decided to prioritize the decor and go simpler with the food and beverages. Three large pizzas ended up being the perfect amount of food along with a large homemade Caesar salad and raspberry cheesecake (both courtesy of Rex who is the best partner ever!!!).

While it may have taken me all of today to recover from, I had such a fun time planning and hosting Galentine’s gathering this year, and I can’t wait to do it all over again next year!