Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and once again stealing my heart with one of her unique and beautiful hats is milliner Sonia Caceres.

I love checking in with Caceres to see what’s new, because her one-of-a-kind headgear is always brimming with amazing creativity. Caceres’s latest creation is an original-design, Valentine red wool hat, inspired by the flirty fashion of a roaring ’20s flapper girl.

“I created this red hat with thoughts of love,” said Caceres, a North Sider who previously owned Sonia Simone, a boutique that was on Armitage Avenue. “I was experimenting with creative design in the crown area by molding the felt when it was wet and pinning the folds until it dried. I love the way it came out.”

Caceres designed the unique crown style with two hand-sculpted ridges that lead to a gold-thread embroidered red Asian flower, to which she added a bouquet of red and black coq feathers that, “sweetly flutter from the middle of the flower.” You can wear the hat a few different ways, and the slightly turned-up brim can also be pulled down, said Caceres, who wrapped the crown with a webbed gold ribbon and edged it with red chenille to tie the color scheme together.

Her hats are fashioned after the elegant Edwardian period as well as the flapper girl era, and, “Each item has a story to tell, a journey all its own,” said Caceres, who attended LeMoyne Elementary School in Lake View with me.

Caceres lovingly and painstakingly creates her hats with new and vintage elements---beautiful trinkets and treasures she has collected throughout the years.

“I call my hat designs ‘nouveau vintage’: New hats with vintage style, hats with a life all their own, complete with their own butterfly wings to fly,” she said. “Each hat is uniquely original in its design, one-of-a-kind made especially for you, made with true love from my creative heart to yours.”

Caceres offers custom design work through her Graceful Butterfly Millinery Web site at www.gracefulbutterfly.com. She also sells a line of ready-to-wear hats and headbands (including bridal ones) online on Etsy.

Now, I know all of you guys out there are probably thinking about the Super Bowl — not your valentine. But give her a pretty red bonnet — and not just a card with a store-bought sonnet — and think about how wonderful she’ll think you are. That could mean one red-hot night!

Because any hat-loving woman — anywhere — would no doubt flip her lid for Caceres’s Valentine chapeau.

“My hats have been sold all over the world,” said Caceres, who recently finished designing eight hats for Opera Australia’s La Boheme production. “They’re living lives that I haven’t indulged in, visiting countries I have yet to explore. They’re fluttering the earth in beautiful flight — as butterflies always do.”

Meet the new boss… of the Old Town Triangle Association, who happens to be the old boss of the 43rd Ward, former alderman Vi Daley. Daley was elected president of the community group last week. Also voted in were Jeff Smith, first vice president; Karen Pfendler, secretary; Claire Leman, treasurer; and Robert Gibbs and Lance Hornaday, directors.

Daley’s goals include working with 43rd Ward Alderman Michele Smith to address bicycle routes and improving pedestrian safety at Clark and Menomonee, as well as an ongoing project of bettering the Eugenie/Clark/LaSalle intersection.

“I say chalk up one for the good guys,” said one member of Neighbors For A Better Old Town (NBOT), which had strongly opposed outgoing OTTA president Phil Graff. “The wicked witch is dead … long live the OTTA. NBOT will hopefully never have to rear its nuisance collective head again.”