Valentine's Day

I was reading a friend's blog awhile ago and came across a post about The 14 Days of Valentine's. Basically, you do something special for you spouse each day leading up to and on Valentine's Day. I loved the idea and decided to do it for Damien this year. I think he really enjoyed it. Here's what I did:

1. One homemade Valentine card
   
2. Two shoe trees
3. Toy Story 3 movie night
4. Rock climbing date
5. Ciniminis from Burger King for breakfast (500 calories)
6. Six GOOD chocolate bars
7. Seven pieces of Camembert (his favorite French cheese) with fancy crackers in his lunch
8. Sourdough waffles for breakfast (8 ingredients)
9. Coupon to have nine items of clothing ironed
10. Homemade origami box with slips of paper inside listing ten things I love about him
    
11. "I love you" written in eleven different languages and posted on the mirror
12. Homemade crossword puzzle
13. Bakers dozen of his favorite cookies
14. Valentine's Day dinner

It was really fun to do for him, especially because he didn't know what was going on until day 2. When I gave him his homemade Valentine card (on day one) he thanked me but the look on his face said, "Where is my gift? Is this all I get?" It was really fun come up with everything and get it all together secretly without him knowing. He almost caught me one day when he came home early. Luckily our door has a lock on the inside that can only be unlocked from inside. It gave me enough time to shove what I was working on into a drawer before opening the door without him being curious!

Christmas in NOLA

We flew to New Orleans on my birthday and spent two weeks there. Here are some of the highlights.

Picked out a Christmas Tree
This tree was too small.

And this tree had too few branches.


But this one was just right. We just had to get it tied to the car well enough to make it down the block.



Then Damien had to get it in the house.


Celebrate my 24th birthday!
I got some fabulous shoes...had Thai food for dinner...


homemade chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for dessert!


Afterward we decorate the Christmas tree


while Damien fell asleep on the couch because he was sick.


Christmas Eve
The family came over for the gift exchange.

We got to open one gift before bed. Rita and Tricia got me raccoon mittens. They are nice and warm but still freak me out a bit if I actually look at them! (I'm terrified of raccoons after having a few encounters with them.)


Christmas Day
We had a great Christmas despite Damien's expressions in these first two pictures.



My husband likes to wear Indian dresses to dance around in. Bet you never knew that!


Dinner with the family. You have to be young and hot to sit at this table.


A few days later
We gave the Zellers a brief tour of NOLA.

New Year's Eve
Dinner with our friends and...

fireworks and ice hockey. Damien got owned by a girl who's 12!

New Year's Day
Lunch with the Krentels!

Since I last posted, we've...

• tried some new recipes including one for roasted beets. YUM!

• (I) made some sample winter pillowcases for the quilt shop

• decorated for Christmas (don't worry, they aren't up anymore)

• had 2 inches of snow that shut the city down for a week. I haven't had any snow days since the ice storm in Spokane when I was in elementary school! It was pretty fun for the first few days until we got cabin fever and just wanted to go outside. We had a nice little adventure to the grocery store which took us forever to get to because of all the Georgia drivers.
  

• went to New Orleans for my birthday, Christmas, and New Years

• had some car troubles that forced us to rent this beaut. (Aka. Cloud the second)