Celebrate Valentine’s Day at home—and extend the love to everyone by playing with organic, earth-friendly products.

Call me an incurable romantic, but I think February 14 is one of the most important days of the year. Valentine’s Day honors and celebrates our ability to love. This year, plan a romantic fireside picnic at home--whether or not you have a fireplace.

Creating a symbolic hearth for your celebration is easy and fun. Define the area using a low table, a shallow drawer placed upside down, a stone slab or a beautiful piece of flat wood. Even a simple scarf can set a hearth space. Arrange candles, flowers, photos, poems, notes, crystals, shells, feathers—whatever feels right—intentionally and aesthetically. Spread out a picnic blanket on the floor Add comfy pillows, light the candles and enjoy your night.

Big Dipper Waxworks Pure Beeswax Tea Lights
Box of 16; $20; case of 48, $46; bigdipperwaxworks.com

These tea lights are hand poured into clear, high-heat polycarbonate cups for maximum glow and safety. They burn beautifully for five hours, with a sweet, honey fragrance. (Or try Big Dipper’s aromatherapy tins in Rapture, a mix of patchouli and cassia, and Sensuality, palmarosa and geranium). Big Dipper donates 10 percent of net profits to help prevent bee colony collapse disorder.

Valentine's Day at Home

When you celebrate at home, you can:

• Enjoy privacy.
• Go with the flow.
• Create atmosphere.
• Select your own menu.
• Pick your own soundtrack.
• Be intimate without concern.
• Wear what you like or nothing at all.

Buy a bulk case of Big Dipper tea light candles to create messages for your sweetheart. Draw a heart or arrange them to spell words such as “love” or your sweetheart’s name.

A Bubble Bath for Two

EO French Lavender Bubble Bath
12 fluid ounces, $11.99; eoproducts.com
Super abundant, aromatic bubbles with organic extracts soften and soothe skin.

Weleda Pomegranate Regenerating Body Oil
3.4 ounces, $28; weleda.com
Pomegranate is Aphrodite’s fruit. This rich, sensual biodynamic oil is perfect for pampering your lover with a massage.

Pangea Organics Pyrenees Lavender with Cardamom Bar Soap
3.75-ounce bar, $8; pangeaorganics.com
This certified organic skin-smoothing soap has two aphrodisiac scents: lavender, the “herb of love,” and invigorating cardamom.

Portico Organic Towels
$16.99; porticohome.com
Wrap your lover and yourself in a lush, plush organic cotton towel. Available at bedbathandbeyond.com

Boon Odd Ducks
$8.49; booninc.com
Odd Ducks are BPA-free, PVC-free and phthalate-free.

For the Best Bath

• Clear away bathroom clutter, especially items such as toilet brushes that could spoil the mood.
• Clean the room top to bottom and the tub so it sparkles.
• Pay attention to air quality, temperature and lighting.
• Fill a pretty basket with essentials for a luxury bath for two.
• Toss some rose petals and aphrodisiac essential oils into the water.
• Set pillar candles around the room.
• Mood music makes all the difference.
• Humor is good foreplay, and bath toys are fun!

Eat Your Aphrodisiacs

This is not the night for diets. Consider whipping up a batch of puttanesca, or “sauce of the whores,” with onions, garlic and hot chiles—all natural aphrodisiacs. There’s nothing demure about puttanesca.

Oysters: Aside from their suggestive appearance, oysters deliver a whopping load of zinc, which feeds your sex organs.

Hot Chiles: These contain capsaicin, which produces opiates in the brain and enhances circulation in the body’s fine vessels.

Olives: Legend has it that the essential fatty acids in green olives make men more virile and black ones increase libido in women.

Onions and Garlic: Both have long histories as love enhancers. In monasteries around the world, people who are abstaining from sex stay away from these two.

Capers: Prized in courts of antiquity as key ingredients in love potions. Cleopatra is said to have served capers at banquets to help win the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.

Wine and Roses

Bonterra McNab 2006
$13.99; americasbestorganics.com
An affordable premium wine made with organic grapes, with hints of pepper, cedar and fragrant vanilla spice.

Organic Bouquet United Plant Savers Rose Bouquet
2 dozen roses, $69.95; organicbouquet.com
When you give these long-stem lavender-pink roses, you also support United Plant Savers, devoted to protecting native medicinal plants. The Fair Trade-certified roses, produced by growers who are transitioning to organic practices, are shipped fresh from the farm.

Schisandra Cocktail

This cocktail may be virgin but you won’t be after drinking it. Schisandra is a superberry, an adaptogen and an aphrodisiac. Simply mix organic Schisandra concentrate, sparkling water and agave nectar to taste. Shake.

Dr. Chang Naturals ChiBerry Unsweetened Tonic
16 oz bottle; $24.97; organicchiberry.com
This certified organic, pure concentrate is sustainably cultivated in the United States.

Wholesome Sweetener Organic Blue Agave
23.5 oz bottle; $6.99; wholesomesweeteners.com
This Fair Trade-certified, organic sweetener mixes easily--perfect for cocktails. Available at amazon.com.

CHOCOLATE CHOICES

Cocoa is called “food of the gods” because it stimulates the same brain chemistry that occurs when we fall in love. It is a superfood and an aphrodisiac. (and a sacred plant!)

Chocolove Organic 73 Percent Dark Chocolate Bar
3.2oz, $3.79; chocolove.com
Downright naughty, this bar melts in your mouth in all the right ways—and has love poems printed inside the wrapping.

Theo Organic 70 Percent Dark Chocolate
3 ounces, $4; theochocolate.com
This Fair Trade certified dark chocolate is deep, smooth and seductive.

Sweet Riot Pure 70 Percent Dark Chocolate
3.5 ounces, $3.99; sweetriot.com
These organic and Fair Trade certified bars have artwork that celebrates culture and diversity on every package.

Green & Blacks Dark 70 Percent Chocolate
3.5oz bar; $3.99; greenandblacks.com
Exquisitely delicious, intensely flavorful Fair Trade-certified dark chocolate.