Happy Valentine’s Day!

I hope you’ve been told how much you are loved today, because you are. 🙂

My love brought me a lovely bunch of tulips today. Rather than taking a picture and instagramming them (which I will probably do anyway), I decided to draw!

I really am enjoying FiftyThree’s Paper app.
Rather than buying B-Money a present, I decided to make something that would speak straight to his heart, these gluten-free and dairy-free cookies from the Tasty Kitchen Blog. He’s a traditionalist at heart and always wants chocolate chip cookies, but a good chocolate peanut butter cookie has to taste yummy when you haven’t had many treats in over a week. 😉

Maybe I’ll be crazy and have dessert before dinner tonight! But I’m definitely saving room for the short ribs that have been cooking away in the crock pot…

Ok, so…

It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. I’ve worked every day since the 6th and it just hit me that I won’t get a day off until the 22nd. Literally. But I’ve actually really enjoyed the last week and a half. I’ve been babysitting for the toddler and we had our AIA Winter Retreat over the weekend. I love all three of my jobs. 🙂 It also just hit me that I have three jobs. How come I still can’t afford the iPad? 😉

A few weeks ago my bro came to hang out with us. We went to YoPop (per usual) and he got one of every flavor. And ate it all.

The next day we hung out with our AIA buddies and watched the Super Bowl. You probably could guess that I didn’t give a flying flip about the football. Just the commercials. And the baby. I just want to squeeze her!

SO. CUTE.

Confession: I’ve been watching a lot of Gossip Girl. It’s so bad. But so good. I just love the fashion. And how come our uniforms were actually uniforms and they just wear whatever the heck they want to school?

Anyway, hanging out with the toddler has been fun. Especially the outfits.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Why didn’t I ever think to eat with a fork in one had and a spoon in the other? It makes eating yogurt and macaroni & cheese so much easier.

I’ve also been jogging to the park with the toddler. Somehow she knows when I take the long way there. And at some point she inevitably picks up crap and throws it. (Not literal crap. I’m a better babysitter than that.) After this photo I had to comb through her curls to dig out the pieces. And still found some on the couch later.

Ah, don’t you love those curls?

I was way more excited about Valentine’s day this year than I have been since 3rd grade. I’m not sure why. I just wanted to make fun treats and paint my nails red. So the toddler and I made some pink cookie sandwiches and some rice krispies treats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The word “treats” is always spoken by the toddler in a reverent whisper. I learned last week that her dad gives her a “special treat” on Sundays to keep her quiet during church. I tried to ask her questions about it to figure out what it was. All she said was it’s sticky. Turns out it’s a ring pop.

I painted her nails yesterday. She loved it. I was shocked that she sat still long enough to let them dry. And to take this picture.

I had a pretty good Valentine’s day myself. 🙂 B-money perused my Pinterest and got me a ring I pinned.

Love it! We’re going out to dinner tonight to celebrate. I’m looking forward to him being able to drive and to having leftovers for lunch tomorrow. 🙂

chocolate treats

So for Valentines day we decided to make ourselves some dark chocolate treats. Now, I usually crave salty/crunchy things rather than sweets, but on Monday I was like Pavlov’s dogs when I read this post on KERF. So B-Money and I picked up some dark chocolate squares from the store on our way home from the gym (we went to the gym together, since it was a romantic day… usually I go to a women’s gym) and let our creative juices flow as we tried to narrow down the flavor/filling combos we wanted to try.

After dinner (which was this amazing chicken parmesan) we got some chocolates melting in a double boiler. I haven’t melted chocolate the “proper” way in a long time.

Mmm… it smelled so good.

While the chocolate melted we gathered our fillings… I ended up ditching the almond butter since we decided to fill some with actual almonds.

Here we have some chopped almonds, peanuts, and ground sea salt. I actually really like salt and chocolate. Call me weird if you must. But don’t say it’s gross until you’ve tried it.

We started out trying to fill the little trays using a funnel, plugging it between candies to prevent making a big mess. However, the chocolate was too hot to plug using a finger and we didn’t feel like messing around with it any more. So Brian worked his magic of doing things without spilling and voila! Yummy chocolate in the wrappers with out too much mess!

I did my best to build a “wall” of chocolate so our fillings wouldn’t ooze out the sides after un-wrapping. I just shook and tapped it around forcing the chocolate up the sides, but not over the tops of the wrappers. Not perfect, but it’ll do pig. [Anna, do you like my nizzails?]

Lola could smell that we were up to something.

So naturally we said hello. How could you NOT LOVE HER!? Sometimes I just want to SQUEEZE her! But I don’t.

Before the chocolate set too much, we sprinkled in some fillings. Then we popped them into the fridge to let the chocolate set up all the way.

Then we drizzled on some more chocolate, making sure we paid attention to the fillings. We topped each treat with a little something so we would know what we had in the middle.

You can see we have almonds, peanuts, sea salt (I left them with only one layer of chocolate, so they came out like bowls), caramel with sea salt, and peanut butter. The peanut butter are the ones with kind of lumpy tops, sans topping. They are quite rich. I can only eat one at a time. (I know someone else who can eat more at a time but chooses to show self control… I think I am a silent convict-er, if you will. I don’t say anything, but my lack of joining in puts a damper on the ‘party.’ It’s the same way when he orders a coke. I don’t mean to be, I just don’t enjoy too much of it.) I think next time I would use a different kind of chocolate. I used a baking chocolate, probably should have used a candy chocolate, or a melting chocolate.

 

Actually, these guys were so rich that I needed a little sip of milk straight from the bottle. And I hate milk.

You can almost make out the pretty pink daisies on the window sill to the right of the bottle. And a very blurry, very big map to the left. And yes, we have Christmas lights up. They will be up as long as we live in a basement! 🙂

happy (belated) v-day

Actually, I hate calling it v-day. It’s too militaristic. Happy (Belated) Valentines day! We didn’t plan anything special, although I was surprised with some LOVELY pink gerbera daisies 🙂 Then, shortly after that surprise, we were surprised with some cupcakes from our neighbors/landlords/really cute little girls.

You might be thinking, “Shouldn’t there be another chocolate cupcake so they can both have one of each?” Well, one of the chocolates got snagged before the plate even made it through our door. I asked little Rebecca (I’m Miss or Mrs. (depending on their mood) Rebecca) which one was best. She said the one with the gummy bears.

I have a feeling she decorated the white ones. And they were quite good.
They were so good in fact that I was inspired to make some treats too! So after reading KERF’s post from Monday morning, I decided to make some chocolates, too. And, yes, I took pictures. 🙂 I’ll post them here in a bit.