St. Valentine's Day Weekend - 2016

Hiiii peoples!

Well look at that, it's still February and I'm posting my Valentine's Day post in the same month that it happened! Am I good or what? You should be nodding. Are you nodding? Good.

This may be one of our best heart days yet! Mainly because instead of venturing out into the mad crowds of crazy people, trying to book a reservation and all that hullabaloo, we stayed HOME. 

Introvert. Heaven. *cue angelic singing*

Home is nice. It's my favorite-est place to be. A place where after being peopled out after a long week (my poor little introverted self can only take so much), I can just relax and be myself and not say a thing, if I want to. And Robert is my introvert buddy, so he understands!

We started out Saturday morning with this lovely breakfast:

GF Chocolate Chip Waffles WITH Chocolate Syrup (Mmmhmm, I did that) and Orange Slices.

 
We spent Saturday catching up on suuuper fuuuun things like dishes, and tidying up the house after the work week. Friday evening we went grocery shopping early because we didn't want to get caught in the crowds of men storming the store for last minute Valentine gifts :P Robert picked out a bouquet of flowers for me while we were there! Lol, we're such an old married couple. IT WAS a surprise! I wasn't in that area when he picked them out, BUT I did know he was going to get some for me before we left the house, cuz I hinted that there would be a better selection to choose from if we went early.  :) I HAVE picked out my own flowers before, but not until recently. It's because I'm an artsy person! I like looking at  all the different flowers and seeing what I'm in the mood for, but this time I wanted him to pick. And chose well, he did.

Are they not lovely? He knew exactly what I wanted before I did.

The spread for the next day.

Pink Moscato Champagne (Birthday present from my mother-in-law), Juniper Berry and Bay Leaf infused Olive Oil (Aldi's), Almond and Hazelnut stuffed Green Olives (Aldi's), Turkish Figs (Aldi's), Herb and Pepper encrusted Salami (Aldi's), Hawaiian BBQ and Himalayan Sea Salt Kettle Brand chips with Avocado oil (Krogers), Chocolove brand chocolate, "Spicing Up Married Life" book by Father Leo Patalinghug, and "The Vow" movie, one of my faves.

Aldi's had a BUNCH of specialty items on sale after Christmas and we stocked up for this!

 Speaking of Father Leo Patalinghug, guess who came to our church? You betcha, the man himself. HE WAS AWESOME! He came for our annual Mission and spoke at our Church for 3 nights and boy were they memorable evenings. If you haven't heard of him before, he is a chef and has a cooking show on EWTN called Savoring the Faith; he is also kind of a celebrity now after beating Bobby Flay on Food Network in a fajita cooking competition about 6 years or so ago.
 BUT THE WAY HE SPEAKS. OH MY GOODNESS. He just ignites you with a blazing fire for your faith And he's hilarious. He has published three books, and we have them all now, including the marriage one pictured above. They have recipes in them :) Including the fajita recipe he beat Bobby Flay with! Before priesthood he used to teach martial arts and self defense, and is pretty awesome at breakdancing. I mean, HOW COOL IS THAT?! Including videos below so you can get to know him:

Of course we got a picture with him! He told us we looked like we got married when we were 12 XD

Selfies with the marriage book!

Heart Strawbs, something I started doing last year. Just cut a V in the top of the whole strawberry before cutting and you'll have cutesie little hearts!

Breakfast on Sunday morning. Almond flour pancakes with strawberries hearts, part of a Pumelo (The ancestor of the grapefruit, and much better I think. Less bitter.), and pork sausage patties.

It's not a Valentine's Day post without at least one picture of us.

Champagne and Roses.

Foccacia Bread! I used the recipe in Cybele Paschal's ' The Baker's Handbook'. I loooove her cookbooks. Here is the link if you are interested in the cookbook. I added the grapes and majoram on top and it was amazing. It was hard to refrain from eating the whole thing between the two of us!

Ze romantic dinner. Complete with candles.

Bubbly in the candlelight.

So we ate our finger food, sipped the bubbly, watched The Vow, gobbled up as much foccacia as we could get away with, and it was such a nice evening, just being home together. We're realizing how precious moments like these are, so for us this Valentine's Day was more about making uninterrupted time for each other (and good food) instead of extravagant gifts. Not that I don't like extravagant gifts *hint hint*. Buuuut time is priceless and we never know how much we have until we lose it.

So cherish the people you love!

How did you guys spend your Valentine's Day??? I hope it was amazing whether you're are in a relationship or not :)

Cheers!

A Valentine Craft

Hi peoples!

So I made a crafty thing for Valentine's Day! (it was actually a couple of days after Valentine's day, but who's keeping track?) It's the thought that counts.

And, AND, I took pictures while I did it. *gasp*

I have two doors that are worth hanging wreaths onto at my house and I happened to have zero wreaths for Valentine's day, sooooo I thought I should fix that problem. Well, I fixed one problem. I only made one wreath...which leaves the other door feeling very awkward in its bareness. I'm sure the neighbors don't notice the absence seeing that they still have their outdoor Christmas decorations up....*ahem*...so we're totally good.

So here's what you'll need:

Fake flowers in three different colors ( I bought two bouquets of each at The Dollar Tree)

Ribbon (about 24 in. long depending on how low you want the wreath to hang)

Hot glue gun with extra glue sticks

A sharpie 

Scissors

Utility or X-acto knife

A large piece of cardboard

 

Gather your supplies.

Draw the shape you want your wreath to be on the cardboard. I didn't use a template, but I'm sure you could find one easily online. I'm lazy, so I just freehand-ed it. Cut around the outside edge with your knife and cut out the middle part.

I popped the flowers off of their stems and if you compare the front flower to the back ones, you can see that I trimmed them slightly. They were a whole lot easier to work with after I did that!

After you have cut out your heart (gosh that sounds bad), I mean wreath, glue the ribbon to the back and it should look like this.

Start gluing your flowers to the wreath.  I tried to do an ombre look with my wreath, but you could mix them up if you like. Just keep gluing, just keep gluing, just keep gluing, gluing, gluing. What do we do? We gluuuuue! If you have a certain song stuck in your head, I succeeded :D

So after you remove all the sticky spiderweb-y glue strings off of you and the wreath, here is what you should have if you did exactly what I did! YAY! I'm quite proud of that thing :)

Overall it cost about $6 to make since I already had the cardboard, ribbon, and tools in my stash. How's that for awesome? :)

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3

~Mary

Valentine's Day 2014

 

Hi peoples! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day, single or not.When I was single, I used V-day as a great excuse to eat more chocolate and watch sappy romance movies that guys can't stand ;) My hubby has been a pretty good sport with those though.....unfortunately he isn't up for watching one every night in February like my sister and I did while we were still living at home. Drat. I enjoyed it while it lasted! I guess I need to plan a girl's night out to sate my girlish heart.

Despite my hectic past few days of work (why does everyone wait until the last minute?), my Valentine's day was pretty awesome. Got home at 5ish and got a call from Mom and Dad asking if Robert and I were interested in getting Chinese. She got an enthusiastic yes. No cooking? Count me in! So I changed into my new dress from ThredUP (which I'll show in some pics below) and Mom and Dad brought the Chinese :) 

Here are some pics of the day:



The Dinner Table and Pink and Red Roses from Robert.

A Valentine garland I made a few years ago.

The greenery garland is from our wedding table. I just recently placed it above our dining room door to add some color to the room.

The "Love" sign was something I made a few years ago with wooden letters from Wal-mart and scrapbook paper cut to fit, then modge podged onto the letters.

 

We finally got a frame for this! I found this picture at Hobby Lobby awhile back. Originally I swapped it out with another picture that hung in my childhood bedroom, but now it will be kept out year round. I LOVE these pictures!

When V-day comes around I usually set out all my romantic books and movies to show my appreciation. These are a few good reads. (Warning: P.S. I Love You has some adult content which I DO NOT support. I may do a review on it someday, but for now, please read with caution. Otherwise it is a good story.)

More decor. Again, these romance movies both have fast-forward worthy parts in them, so keep the remote ready, especially when watched with little ones.

Cutesie window stickers from Wal-Mart.

My ThredUp Dress! You can see how I layered with it in pics below.

Chocolates from Robert :) He even remembered that I liked the design on the box!



My card. We always use sealing wax on our cards to each other

Robert's present from me. I work at a candy store so I get to make special packs like this. My inspiration was from the Percy Jackson series. If you haven't read them, Percy's mom works at a candy store and buys him blue candy to prove to her unfortunate husband that blue food does exist. We just finished the series so I thought this would be perfect!

We're adorbs, I know.



Our activities fro the evening. I found a Romeo and Juliet puzzle at Jo-Ann Fabrics last year (I fell in love with the pic on my copy) and plan to frame it once we put it together. We're still working on it. Er, well, Robert is working on it, mostly. I'm horrible at putting together huge puzzles.


I combined the roses the next day.

 



My Mother- in- law, or "Mother-in-love" as she says, spoiled me with some pretty jewelry for my V-day gift :)

I put some of the roses in this re-usable vase that my aunt gave me.

I forgot to add this in the Christmas post! Robert made me this AWESOME pot rack for part of my Christmas present!!!!!! It is so perfect for our kitchen. I was completely surprised. He knew I wanted one, but I wouldn't have dreamed he would make me one! I couldn't have pictured anything better than this.

 

He also made this side table with my Dad for our stove, to fit in the gap between the wall and the stove. I am just absolutely loving it!
 



Tonight I made Chicken Breasts with Bacon wrapped around and Sage sprinkled on top. They were delicious!



For our side, I made fresh Brussel Sprouts, halved and cooked with a chopped onion in olive oil.
 



Last, but not least, dessert. Banana Crumb Muffins



 Happy Late Valentine's Day to you all! 

Of Phantom of the Opera Music/Guest Rooms, Birthdays, and Valentine Pretties....

Hello there!

How is everyone surviving this weather? We got about a foot of snow overnight. Yeah. I'm thrilled! (that comment was just dripping with sarcasm) More shoveling. More wind. Bleh.

On the bright side, the weather is so nasty that I get today off! YAY! 

I've had so many blog post ideas floating around in my head, but every time I've tried to sit down and write about them something else needed to be done instead. Oh, the joys of life.

So here I am. And I have a boat load of pictures to share with you!

Here is what went on in January:

            The celebration of my 19th and Robert's 22nd Birthday. Yes, we have the same birthday :) I made Robert a chocolate cake with snowflake sprinkles and I attempted to make petite fours. Neither turned out as planned, but they tasted good.

              Yeah, we're getting old. One candle for each of us. Don't judge us, we wanted to eat cake!

Mom gave me this :) It was yummy!

This is me after I had my wisdom removed...oops...I mean wisdom teeth removed :D All four of 'em and all were impacted. I look horrible in this pic :P I'm glad it's over. Cross that off my list of "The fun things you get to do once you're an adult".

Most of January was spent recovering from this, and being cooped up in the house and at work due to the lovely weekend winter storms we've been having lately.

"The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway" Ha! Rub it in, Elsa. Want to use your magical powers to remove the snow off my driveway? Oh wait, I already did that.

And here is what I've been up to so far this month:

This is a project I began in September: Our Phantom of the Opera themed Music/Guest room! I'm so happy with how it turned out! Despite how long it took to paint :P

Before........

 Prepping and Painting.........

  Don't mess with this woman. I was tired of painting at this point.

 After..........I made the felt wall hanging in the pic above.

  I love how the red turned out!

              Robert and I painted the mirror black and silver, and the candle stand was also spray painted black. I painted a black design on the candles too, just to add some artwork. They looked a little bland by themselves.

I got the idea to cover light switch covers with scrap book paper from Shealynn at Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe. Here's the link to the tutorial: DIY Switchplate Covers.

 I love barbies....so obviously there was going to be a Christine/Erik combo in this room! I need to make a mask for Erik.

 I printed off some sheet music from the Phantom and modge-podged it to this magazine organizer.

 My Egyptian shelf. I love Ancient Egyptian history. I wanted to be an Egyptologist when I was little, after watching the Mummy movies.

 Two wedding gifts from two different people that go together perfectly!

     I had the idea of using my guardian angel picture with the idea of "The Angel of Music" in mind.

 I even decorated the trash can. I cut out a mask shape with scrapbook paper and stuck it on using double sided tape.

    My caged "lark". If you've seen Sweeney Todd, you'll understand.

   My brother found this music box for me. It plays "The Music of the Night".

 My Christine costume I made for Halloween.

                  And here we are as The Phantom and Christine during our Halloween party!

This room was an awesome project and it took about a month to complete. Some of the decor I already had, and some things I repainted or made from scratch. I love designing rooms :) There are so many themes to choose from! This one was no-brainer though :D Music room? Definitely POTO.

    Here is what I'll be working on today...Valentine decorating! It won't be a mess for long............

Here are some pretties I've found lately: FROZEN valentines! I love the one with Olaf on it :D The two mailboxes are for my niece and nephew. They like hello kitty and star wars at the moment. These were too cute to pass up! The girl outfit is for my other niece. I love the leggings. Babies in leggings are adorable. The skull and crossbones outfit is for my future son, whenever he comes along. I'm not pregnant, yet. But hopefully sooner than later! I tend to buy baby clothes every once in a great while. If I see something I like and will probably never find again, I'm going for it! I dislike a lot of boy clothes out there right now, so when I saw that this was the last one on the rack, I grabbed it and ran :D

So that's what I've been up to lately. Besides shoveling :P

Hope you're staying warm. If you live in a tropical climate....PLEASE TAKE ME WITH YOU!

Cheers!

~Mary