|

February, the month of love and chocolates, and apparently, the month of made-up holidays! Move over Valentine’s day, there’s a new ‘fake’ holiday in town and it’s called Galentine’s Day!

While Valentines Day, February 14th, is a lovely way to celebrate your other half, in recent years this new phenomenon has come along that encourages gathering all your gal pals and celebrating each other! While many may claim that this is another ‘fake’ holiday created by card companies, we think they’re wrong! This is a day in which ladies lift each other up and celebrate friendships! It encourages us to make time for each other, and this is a message we can definitely get behind! Besides if people can get behind ‘national pizza day’ surely we can have Galentine’s Day?

 

Who even started this?

What’s fantastic about Galentine’s day is that it was created by a female! Now this female just happened to be a fictional character, but the sentiment of the day stuck! Galentine’s Day originated with Parks and Recreations character, Leslie Knope. On February 13th she gathered all of her lady friends and had a small party where ‘ladies celebrated ladies.’ Women shared small gifts with each other based on crafts they had made! The sentiment of the episode stuck and has led to companies creating promotions surrounding the day itself! Don’t panic though, this is not a day that has to cause you huge expense, it’s a day in which us ladies can celebrate each other through small simple ideas!

How do I celebrate it?

Before you go dashing out the door to try to organize a brunch, you don’t need to overthink this! Sit down and grab a pen, try to think about things that you and your gals love doing! Obviously, we won’t be hitting the party scene any time soon, but we have some fantastic ideas that might help you to organize your own Galentines Day!

Image result for galentines day

Pamper Packages

Something we love to do for our friends is to create little care packages and drop them off at their houses! This doesn’t need to be extravagant or expensive, I usually choose small little token gifts such as face masks, a wax melt, and of course, some chocolate! You could write all your gals a personalized note in which you share some of your favorite stories, and thank them for being awesome friends! They usually go down a treat and the girls love them!

Zoom Brunch

While we can’t hit up our favourite café at the moment, it is still possible to have a fantastic brunch with the girls! Research some simple French toast recipes and share them with your friends! Then book them in for a zoom class for brunch together! You can each get creative in the kitchen and then log on and chat with your friends while sharing a virtual meal! This is a great way to check-in with your friends and also gives an amazing well-being boost!

Send them a surprise!

Something we love to do is send our friends a little surprise in the post! We know that we’re posting this today on Galentine’s day, but nothing is stopping you from sending your friend a little treat in the post! Funky Pigeon, Gifts.ie and Etsy all have lovely Galentine cards available online! You could also send them a Boomf which will shower them with confetti and also provide them with a popup cube collage of some of your favourite moments! Galentines isn’t about making huge over the top gestures, it’s about celebrating your friendship and spending time with your gals!

Take-away together

Similar to the Zoom brunch, you could always catch up with your girls for a virtual dinner! Order your favourite take away and sit down to eat together! Another option is the ‘take-home’ boxes that many local restaurants are doing! You could all order your food, get glammed up, and have a catch up while eating your favourite foods!

Quiz time!

Quizzes were something that became so popular during lockdown 1.0 and if you are not sick of them yet, they are a fab way to share a few laughs with your friends! Create a quiz based on some of your favourite tv shows, fashion brands, and hobbies! You could even create a round or two based on your favourite memories or a round filled with funny questions based on each friend! These will create a good time while also allowing you to share a few laughs together!

Watch Party

There’s nothing better than sitting down to watch a film with your girls, but for obvious reasons, we can’t do that together at the moment! Well, we have a solution, watch party is a great site that allows you to watch Netflix at the same time! This is great for allowing us to watch a film or tv series virtually together! We can still crack our jokes and experience the same scenes at the same time! And it removes the ‘awkward trying to hit the play button at the same time’ situation that we used to face when trying to watch shows from different devices! God, what would we do without apps huh?

So whether it’s a virtual zoom, a quiz, or a little treat in the post, we encourage you to take Galentine’s day seriously and spend some good old quality time with your friends this year! There’s been enough doom and gloom already this year, so a good laugh is what we all need!

 

P.S. Yes you can totally gorge on chocolates too!

 

If you would like to support us and the work that we do,  you can donate below ❤


Supported By

Our Pro bono Partners

The Shona Project is a company limited by guarantee. Registered charity number: 20206722. Company registration number: 592520.