Valentine’s Day

I am currently sipping pregnancy tea this morning while the snow falls outside! As pretty as it is and easy as it may be for me to enjoy it while I am safe and cozied up at home, I know that is not the case for all today. Being a teacher, I am off work for the holiday – and likely would be off today anyway with the windchill at -23. Not all are so lucky and still have to go to work. Thinking of my husband as well, who is out spreading salt this morning. It makes me so nervous for him to be out when the roads are not safe!

This morning I am thinking back on our Valentine’s Day yesterday and I kind of wish I could re-live it because it was such a perfect day! Full of quality time with my guy and I could not ask for more.

I am starting to notice Brett and I are both procrastinators when it comes to gifts because it was the night before Valentine’s Day and I admitted to Brett that I hadn’t gotten him anything for him, not even a card. Luckily, he was in the same predicament! I am now wondering if maybe we procrastinate with gift-buying because it is #5 on our love language list…?

I prefer quality time over gifts and Brett prefers acts of service!

We decided to not worry about cards this year or surprise gifts (I can never express exactly how I feel in a card anyway – I would rather show him in person) and instead planned to pick out flowers together and make chocolate covered strawberries – the two things I most wanted for Valentine’s Day!

Side note: Last year, Brett and I both “made” gifts for each other and gave them to each other before heading to dinner on the Plaza. He built me a wood-framed mirror to hang above our stair landing and I had a wall hanging made by Smallwoods of his favorite recipe of his grandma’s – strawberry dip. Since we were picking up strawberries anyway, we decided it would be a perfect day to whip up the dip, too!

At Hyvee, I picked out simple white roses. I am a sucker for white! They look even more beautiful this morning because they have bloomed a little more! I love the way they look in our mostly-white kitchen!

We went on the hunt for all the ingredients we would need. Have you ever loved someone so much that even grocery shopping with them is enjoyable? There I am again, showing my quality time love language!

Once we got home, I left it up to Brett to make the dip – such a special recipe for him! Vanilla is optional in the recipe but anything that say vanilla (optional), I read as vanilla (MUST). My parents went to Mexico within the last couple years and brought us back Mexican vanilla, so that’s the kind we used. A nice little touch!

Strawberry Dip

1 small can of condensed milk

1 container cool whip

1 large bar cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla

It turns out we should have gotten 3 packages of berries instead of 2 because we made so much dip that we ran out of berries for it! By the way, the dip is amazing. Brett could eat it with a spoon! We actually ate the strawberries and dip while we were prepping the chocolate.

Hyvee had the BIGGEST, most delicious raspberries I had ever seen, so we grabbed a package of those to cover in white chocolate!

Brett had milk chocolate duty white I had white!

Once they were all dipped, it was decorating time! The icing pens we bought did not work so I just sprinkled red and gold sprinkles on them. The gold sprinkles reminded me of sea salt and wouldn’t that be delicious on these?? I totally forgot my original plan of sprinkling coconut flakes on the milk chocolate ones, too. I guess we will have to make more! 😉

They turned out delicious and this morning, we only have a few left! I ate so many of the berries and dip yesterday that I wasn’t even hungry when we went out for our dinner date yesterday evening. BUT, that means leftover Italian for today!

The Italian restaurant we went to shortly after finishing the goodies is called Carmen’s Cafe. Almost like a hidden gem in Brookside, because it does not look like anything special from the outside. The inside is super cute and the food is amazing! Brett ordered wine and I am not going to hide the fact that I was very jealous of him. I cannot wait to order wine again!

When we got home from dinner, it was movie time! We decided on Walk the Line, the movie about Johnny Cash. I had never seen it before and it was so good!

This was a bittersweet Valentine’s Day because it was the last one as a family of two. Next year we will be celebrating V-Day as Mom & Dad!

I hope your Valentine’s Day was as amazing and special as our was.

Paige