Heart food, bacon roses and burnt fingers- Love Day Recap 2014

The primary reason I started this blog was so that I can look back years later and have a memory book of our lives. I am not great at journaling on paper and I take a lot of pictures, so the blog thing just seemed to make sense.

So today I am sharing a little recap of our Love Day. Last year The Hubby planned an incredible Bachelor-esque Valentine’s Day so since I knew he had to work late I jumped on board to plan this year’s.

Some of this, like the breakfast, wasn’t thought of until the night before, but it turned out great! For breakfast we had heart pancakes and pink milk.

The pancakes were super easy to make and now that I’ve tried this method with success, I will definitely make this a tradition. Just make your pancake batter as you normally would, set aside a little of it and color it pink with a few drops of red food coloring. Then, put it in a squeeze bottle and cook the pancakes as you normally would, except that you make a heart on top of the batter before flipping. Cal didn’t seem to notice anything different about his pancakes but Gwyn sure did like the little extra something special. But the pink milk was a hit for them both.

For The Hubby we made this bacon rose bouquet, which was surprisingly easy as well.

Gwyn helped take these pictures for me, so, you know… she is three so…. that’s what you get. All you do is roll a piece of bacon around itself in a slightly downward motion to resemble a rose and insert a couple of toothpicks to secure it into place.

Then, line a muffin tin with foil, pressing down into the muffin portions. I then poked a hole in the bottom of each section so that the grease could drain out. Place one bacon rose into each section and bake at 350* for one hour. (I did the prep the night before and just covered with saran wrap so that I could just pop them into the oven the next morning.)

Remove the petals off of some fake roses and put them into a vase (both from the Dollar Tree).

Let them cool on a paper towel and then stick onto the stems and you’re done! Gwyn gave these to her Daddy and he actually got a kick out of them. She thought they were pretty great, too.

We then got ready for the day in our festive attire and drove around to a few of Gwyn and Cal’s friends’ houses to deliver a few Valentines.

Free printable found here; save for next year!

For dinner the kids had a little heart pizza which was once again, so easy. I bought a pre-made whole wheat pizza crust and Turkey pepperoni and cut them into hearts with kitchen shears. Gwyn then squeezed pizza sauce all over it and she and Cal put the cheese and pepperoni on top.

I then got started on The Hubby’s dinner and if it weren’t for my neighbor, I would have never pulled this off. I had NO idea how to properly cook a steak, and she walked me through the whole process, even bringing over what I would need to cook them with. So sweet of her! What you should NOT do, though, is grab the 500* pan with your bare hand. This can really set you back and cause you a lot of pain. This also made for finishing the meal quite difficult.

Have you ever done this? It hurts so badly!!! I ran it under cold water and then clutched a bag of ice (which after talking with my nurse neighbor you’re apparently not supposed to do.) Oops! I took this picture at about 9:00 at night and it was still that red and blistering.

We then wrapped up all the food, grabbed The Hubby’s gift from the kids and jumped in the car to surprise him at work, hoping he hadn’t already grabbed dinner.

He was quite pleasantly surprised and said the steak was cooked perfectly. There was a blue cheese sauce on top and I have to give my neighbor Rachelle all credit because she nailed it. I’ll post a recipe soon.

  After dinner I took the little Buggers home, gave them a one-handed bath and somehow got them in bed without crying in pain. I was SO surprised by how much my hand still hurt. My sweet neighbor came over with Advil and a bandage, and then another neighbor dropped by Black Tea bags. She said they really helped her when she had done the same thing before and oh my goodness, it relieved all pain! Soak Black Tea bags in water, place on top of the burned areas and wrap gauze or a towel around it. In about an hour the pain was manageable so I took the wrap off, and by morning it was all gone. 

I don’t know the science behind it but whatever! It worked!

So, that was our great day. I have never made heart-shaped anything edible for Valentine’s Day before, and after doing these easy recipes I see more of them in our future.

Thanks for stopping by!