cookies we decorated this morning

I LOOOOOVE Valentine’s Day.  I have great memories of spending hours at the kitchen table with all my siblings cutting out hearts from my mom’s flower catalogs and pasting them onto construction paper.  I would make an extra effort on my teacher’s valentine and add some red foil heart stickers and usually finished it off with a delicate paper doily for the trim.

My mom was always very creative with the sayings.  One year I remember very vividly she drew the profile of a kid blowing a bubble and we taped a piece of bubble gum to each valentine that proclaimed, “I chews YOU Valentine!”

This year I kept it pretty simple with the kid’s valentines and stamped an owl on pink cardstock with the words, “Valentine, you’re a hoot!”  We added a heart to his chest and finished him off with some sparkly eyes.  I love valentines of all kinds, but I especially love it when they’re homemade.  John tries to talk me into buying a pack at the store every year, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.   Memories of those hours spent around the kitchen table making 30 plus hand made cards for my classmates and teachers makes me feel all happy and nostalgic.  It was a labor of love and it makes Valentine’s Day Valentine’s Day for me.  

After making the kids a pink heart chocolate chip pancake breakfast, I was lucky enough to spend my Valentine morning with a friend decorating cookies.  My friend Cari made a batch of heart shaped cookies and asked if I could share all my cookie decorating knowledge with her.  We had a lot of fun piping and flooding those delicious bites.

As for my valentine?  Mr. John and I celebrated early with an evening out on Friday and had an incredible time eating sushi, going to see comedian Brian Regan (HILARIOUS) with friends, and ending up at Madonna Inn for some seriously decadant dessert.  The icing on the cake (har har) was that the kids had a sleep over at my parent’s house, so we also got to sleep in!  I call that a perfect Valentine’s date!  

Happy Happy Valentine’s Day!  I now need to get ready for rehearsal as I am in a play that opens THIS Friday!  More about that later…