Photo Credit: Photo by Flickr User Nils Geylen

Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day! Keep your holiday nontoxic with these easy, last minute tips. Find out how to take toxic chemicals out of your romantic meal and your Valentine’s Day sweets, as well as DIY beauty gift ideas for your Valentine, and green tips for your cards and wrapping paper.

Dinner for Two: Staying in? Going out? Either way, we’ve got you covered. Check out these Non-Toxic Tips Tuesday guides to taking toxic chemicals out of your meals.

Going out?

• How to Take BPA Off the Menu: Tips on ingredients to look out for on salads, pizza, pasta, and burritos, as well as easy BPA-spotting rules that you can apply to any cuisine.

Staying in?

• Five Tips for the Non-Toxic Chef: Easy tips to detox your cooking space and habits.
• Take BPA Off of Your Grocery List: Avoid BPA at the grocery store with simple swaps, BPA-free brands, and an easy action at the check-out aisle.

Valentines Day Sweets: Looking for sweets for your sweet? Try these tips for making, and buying, less toxic Valentines Day goodies.

• Pink frosting: Skip the artificial colors and make your own festive pink frosting. Try this recipe from Mkokopelli: It replaces food coloring with strawberries and raspberries.
• Limit your packaging: If you’re shopping for candies, avoid individually wrapped items. Look for bulk sweets, or items that haven’t been hyper-packaged for Valentines Day. Decorate less packaged items with pretty recycled paper or fabric hearts. For a fabric hearts idea, try this fabric hearts necklace craft from Salsa Pie.
• Dip it in chocolate: You can make incredibly pretty and delicious treats by using these two rules: dip it in chocolate, cover it in something yummy. Buy treats in bulk (pretzels, dried fruit, etc.) or make your own, stock up on chocolate chips, and find a yummy extra (crushed hard candies, dried coconut, etc.) When you’re buying treats, go organic if you can. If that’s not possible, do what makes sense for your budget, read the labels, and try to choose treats that are less processed with shorter ingredient lists. Melt chocolate over low heat or even in the microwave. Dip treats in the chocolate, roll them in your yummy extra, then refrigerate them on a baking sheet.

DIY Beauty Gifts: Skip the stores, and pamper your Valentine with an easy (and inexpensive!) beauty treat.

• Sugar or salt scrubs: Combine two parts sugar or salt with one part olive oil. For a creamy scrub, replace olive oil with coconut oil. To create finer exfoliating particles, grind your sugar or salt in a coffee grinder.
• Cocoa bubble bath: Store this in a mason jar, jam jar, or any recycled glass container. Here’s the recipe from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics:
• Bath treatments: Combine two tablespoons of oats, one teaspoon of baking soda, and wintery spices like cinnamon and cloves in a square of muslin. Tie the muslin at the top, and you have a cute DIY bath ball! Add a note telling the recipient to just pop the bath ball in the tub as it fills with water. You can also try these bath bomb and bath cookie recipes from Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

How to Wrap Your Valentine’s Day Gifts:

• Tape:  The Green Guide recommends stocking up on PVC free tape or recycled gummed paper tape. And remember, when that flurry of gift opening is over and it’s time to gather up and recycle the wrapping paper, tape interrupts the recycling process. Make sure to remove all tape from leftover packaging and paper that you recycle this holiday season.
• Cards: Decorate recycled paper to create homemade Valentines Day cards! A Little Hut has a cute egg carton Valentine idea  and Kaboose has an adorable Valentine using a recycled toilet paper roll. Or try these paper-less Valentine ideas from Planet Green.
• Wrapping paper: Recycle, recycle, recycle! Newspaper, coloring book pages, old maps: All of these paper items make perfect wrapping paper. Let your kids decorate recycled paper by drawing or painting hearts, tracing hand prints, or just adding their own gorgeous scribbles.