Valentine's Day

How was your Valentine's Day? We had a wonderful one! Every year we take turns planning Valentine's Day. You can check out what I did last year. It was so much fun! This year was Ralph's turn. It was a bit of a challenge as we had no money to spend on it. He had to be creative pretty much with what we had. His parents graciously took Arwen for a night for us. I, so far, have not been one of those mom's who looks forward to time away from my child. Maybe it's because I have to leave her two days a week to work? But I have to admit, it was nice to have a night to just focus on us. We haven't done that in quite awhile. Of course, I only called Grandpa and Grandma half a dozen times to tell them things I forgot when we dropped her off. Oh, well. She came home with a super cute Valentine frog and didn't seem to miss us at all!

My little table of Valentine's decorations has grown. I won a really fun giveaway on Can't Stop Crafting. It's the "Love" book on the right. Pretty cute, huh? Mom sent a cute little valentine cards for us and Nugget as well as a cute book and candy for Nugget. Then I snuck in Ralph's Valentine card/gift that I made from things I had on hand. Can you see it in there?

Here it is! I found this "message in a bottle" idea on Crafts By Amanda. I tweaked it make use of what I had on hand: construction paper, coffee syrup bottle, scrap booking supplies, etc. My "message" was a crossword puzzle I created on-line after seeing the idea on the Love Actually blog. My man loves his crosswords! I even stumped him on a few. Kind of funny since it was all about us--course I was wrong on one of them too which didn't help. Oops!

I took care of the table scape because it's what I like to do.

Ralph is busy plating up our grilled Mahi Mahi on a bed of roasted red pepper sauce and topping it with a cilantro pesto. So yummy! We just happened to have some Mahi Mahi in our freezer from when it went on sale some time last fall or summer? It was very tasty.

The whole yummy meal. He also sauteed snap peas in some garlic oil and made fussili pasta with mushrooms. It was all delicious! He does such a wonderful job cooking sometimes I wonder why I do any! (Just kidding! I love to cook too much!)

So it didn't occur to me to tape my message in a bottle into a tight roll so he could actually get it out! We ended up having to break the bottle. Sad! He got very creative trying to get it out but nothing worked! Oh, well. It was still fun!

See this? He even did all the clean up after dinner! Not that he isn't always willing, but I very rarely let him. It's better for our marriage, really. Most of the time I don't like how he cleans up no matter how hard he tries. I decided several years ago I would take care of all clean up so as not to hurt his feelings or make myself unnecessarily frustrated. It was sweet for him to take over on our Valentine date night, so I just closely supervised. *hee, hee*

We, of course, had coffee for dessert along with my favorite cake--Nigella's Chocolate Espresso Cake with Cafe Latte Cream. So yummy! I've been craving it for months. It was the first time for Ralph to make it and it turned out perfect!

Hope you all had fun with your sweeties on Valentine's day!