Some Of Those Pictures I've Been Talking About

I'm keeping my promise, there are pictures for you to see now!
I'll start with valentines day :)

This is the Candy Gram i made for husband:

Cute right? He loved it. I loved that i could get him to peak around the corner of it all cute like he is. If you click it you can see it bigger. I used 15 different candies, but i'm pretty sure it only survived about 2 days.
This is the wonderfully amazing Shrimp Scampi i made for our dinner. Its was d-lish!

This is not what my cake was supposed to end up looking like :( I planned to have a chocolate fondant on it, and i've made the regular white fondant without any problem, but the chocolate didn't work out, i couldn't get it un-sticky enough after i would roll it out to get it off the parchment paper. The flowers turned out great at least, but they would have looked a lot better if they were on the chocolate. It was amazing tasting cake, all made from scratch despite my fail.

The wonderful Oreo Truffles i made to give to friends :) These were the 2 boxes that didn't get given out because we didn't see the friends before husband started eating them. I thought it was really cute in the little boxes.

So yeah, there are a few pictures :) Soon i'll post the pictures from our Basketball Game Adventure.

No Pictures :(

Valentines turned out to be great though.
Saturday evening i spent making Oreo Truffles for some of our friends to give to them at church. I had been planning to make everyone cupcakes, but I had had these lovely magical goodies at Christmas in new mexico (husbands sister leah brought them over) and i saw the recipe on a friends blog so i knew i had to make them. And they turned out great! That night i also made husband hang out downstairs while i was upstairs putting his candy gram together. He didn't like knowing i had a secret that i was putting together at all, as well as having to hang out by himself watching tv. I hid his gift under the bed and he was none the wiser. We actually had to get up at a decent hour for church the next morning because it was Stake Conference, so we ended up exchanging gifts while we were getting ready.
This is where i would insert the picture of cute husband holding his awesome candy gram if i had the missing camera.....*sigh*
i took pictures, with my little camera, of the whole day but like i said, there's no way to get it onto the computer without the missing camera that has the USB cable. sad.
Husbands favorite thing to get me for gifts is movies. It probably is safe that way because if i let him get me the things i really want........lets just say we would be in A LOT of debt. i love him for always wanting to get me everything i want, but movies are a good safe less expensive thing to ask for. He got me The Time Travelers Wife, flowers, and once again a card with completely wonderful things written in it. He's great at that part... *sigh*
i handed out the Oreo Truffles in clear valentine themed Chinese food takeout boxes i had found at Michaels *picture would be inserted here*. I couldn't find 2 of the couples i made the boxes up for, but husband didn't mind eating them for them. He calls them "goobers" and tells me i should open a sweets shop to sell them in. Our friends Tammy & Jeremy loved them so much they had us over to their house to teach them how to make them. i don't see a sweets shop in my near future though.
Now,
*right here*
i would have posted a picture of how our dinner turned out. It was great! I don't think i've ever made shrimp for anyone, or used shallots in anything either, but we both loved it, and i had fun making it.
Then there was desert. Husbands favorite cake on earth is red velvet, so that's what i made for him. It was wonderful.
*insert picture here*
I made it all from scratch too. The cake, the frosting, the fondant. Sadly my chocolate fondant didn't turn out the way i wanted it to. i had made it before in regular white, but the adding the chocolate didn't turn out right. Oh well. But it tasted great, and i had fun making all the gum paste flowers to decorate it with, so i call it a success. Especially since husband LOVED it :]
It was a good Valentines that i would have posted about sooner if i hadn't been searching the house for the camera every day. In all my searching i thought i would have stumbled onto other things i've been looking for or forgot about, but strangely enough i came up with absolutely nothing. And i think my house is a little messier then when i started :[
Now that its warming up outside more, raining less and less and the days are getting longer, we've started walking in the evenings. It would be more fun if we had a dog for this, but we're enjoying the time together. All the neighborhoods around our house, it turns into 5 miles round trip, and its nice. This week looks like a bunch of rainy days though so we'll take a break i guess. But soon i'm hoping to bump up the walking into jogging. Husband hates jogging he says, but i think he'll come around to.
So, there isn't a lot going on this week for us. Husband has duty tonight so i'm having a quiet night alone. I may put in a chick flick and make some popcorn. Later this week, Friday to be exact, we're going on our date for the month (we usually go out more often, but we're trying to save money). Any guesses what we're doing?? I'm so proud of myself for coming up with this idea: we're going to the Kings/Jazz game here in Sac with 4 of our friends :] Our seats are absolutely nose bleeders, but i don't think any of us care. We're all excited. I'll take more pictures, but we'll see when we actually get to post them. Sorry.
So there you go. I'm sorry for the disappointing lack of pictures, but things are the way they are. I'll still keep looking and keep you all updated though.

Planning Ahead

Is it terrible that i've been planning 2 weeks already what i'm going to do for Husband for Valentines Day and there is still a week before the big day? it's not like Valentines is anything significantly special to us as a couple other then the fact that it's Feb 14th, the Valentines Day holiday just like it is for everyone else. But for some reason i'm so excited its the only thing i can think of. At first i think it had a little to do with the fact that we had this impending "separation" in March when Husband would be deployed for a month with the Coast Guard. i haven't been looking forward to this idea at all, so i wanted to have special things to do with him this month before he left. His birthday is in March, so we were going to have to miss having that together again. We haven't spent any of his birthdays together ever. When we were engaged he was deployed at the end of Feb for 5 months, so we missed that birthday, and then again last year after we got married he was sent to school for 5 months at the end of Feb to North Carolina. Wow....no wonder i'm trying to make a bigger deal out of this month then i normally would. Its classic conditioning, the military is training me to be separated from husband every year at the end of February! Those guys are tricky.... ;)

But, it now looks like husband will actually NOT be getting deployed next month. What's this?? Its because they lost his military passport. He can't go to Central America without it. Apparently this losing of passports for these guys isn't unheard of though.....but how that happens is beyond me. So, while someone travels around on husbands "lost" military passport doing who knows what (hopefully not getting husband into trouble), i'll be enjoying my husband through the month of March, for his birthday, and even for a few more months then i usually get to this year. Yea! We just found out this on Monday. There's a small possibility that the missing passports will be found (it would have to show up by Monday though) and he could end up going in the end, but chances are they won't turn up in the next 2 days.

But, since i've started my Valentines Day planning already, there's no reason i shouldn't follow through. I still love my husband! This year we're watching what we spend and saving as much money as possible so we can go to the beach in a few short months, so i've been trying to come up with ideas to make it fun but still inexpensive. First off, I'm planning a pretty cake (yes, its because i've been looking for an excuse to use all my cake decorating stuff i got last year). Its the first thing i need to start on if i'm going to make everything for it. I'm thinking i'm going to make something similar to this:

I'll be making the flowers out of Gum Paste, i just need to get a small foam mate to make the petals on, and a flower cookie cutter. I'm pretty sure i know where i can find it at. I'm not going to do the chocolate frosting though. I'm making a red velvet cake because that's husbands favorite, so i'm going with a white cream cheese/marshmallow frosting, then i'll cover it with marshmallow fondant which i'll have to make (it tastes better then regular fondant).
So there's that. Next, i'll be making this for dinner:

Shrimp Scampi with Linguini

I found it on the Food Network site when i was looking for ideas and i think it'll be perfect with asparagus and spinach salad. i may even have husband cook in all up with me. Thats romantic right? I think it is. He's been helping out a lot more in the kitchen this week and i'm thinking its super great and sweet as heck.
Then for my gift for him i've decided to go with a combo: The Candy Gram! If you don't know what that is, in my case its going to be a message for my special someone with some of the words replaced by candy bar titles (with the candy in it). Its a gift/card/candy all in one! The other week i saw someone eating a Big Hunk! candy bar, and suddenly it was all i could think of. I wanted one soooo bad, but they didn't have them at our grocery store a few blocks away so i never got my fix of it :( But it got me thinking about the times i have had them and i remembered how perfect they are for candy grams. So thats where i got the idea for this gift for him this year. i know where i can get a Big Hunk! in the next town over i think so it'll be in the message for him for sure. He's my Big Hunk. Its a pretty inexpensive gift, and homemade by me. Isn't that what makes for a great special gift? Something made with love :]
i can honestly say i haven't asked for any gifts from husband for Valentines this year. All i'm hoping for is that he'll share some of his candy to be honest. Last year he got me flowers, a movie, and one of the best cards i've ever gotten in my entire life that was so sweet it still makes we tear up just thinking about it. He always manages to say the best things to me :] i love him. This year....i think he wants me to pick out my gift for him. its my own fault for helping so much with Christmas though. But i really mean it when i say i don't care if he gets me anything, so its up to him what he does.

I don't know what we'll do after dinner yet, but if i don't come up with something it'll be something like watching The Princess Bride or some other romantic movie he's willing to sit through. But i'm open to suggestions so if anyone has any good ideas please let me know!
Husband doesn't read what i write on this blog if i don't tell him i've written and my goal is to keep this all secret from him until next weekend, so if you know husband do me a favor and not tell him of my plans ;] I'll take pictures of how the whole thing really does turn out, so keep a lookout for that after the big day. Until then, i hope every one has a great Valentines Day this year!

One of my favorite things about this time of year is these:

Yes, the Reese's Peanut Butter Hearts.
They are my favorite candy in the whole world i think. I used to get bags and bags of these every year and stock up on them so i could still have some after Valentines day. I'm not going to do it this year though... i got one bag and that's going to last me. And when they're gone, they're gone....

1st Valentines Day

We had our first Valentines Day together last weekend. john and i were dating last year for the big v-day, but he was on the boat doing a practice run before their big voyage south that week, so we didn't get to spend it together. But now we've had our first official one together. john had to work though...so he woke me up to say goodbye, and i went back to sleep because saturdays are sacred to me since i work at 9 a.m in the week and we got the crap time slot for church at 9 a.m. (thank goodness they don't believe in an 8 a.m. meetings here). Saturday is my only day to sleep in later then 7:30. So, john went to work, and i got to sleep in. When i did get up, i showered and made myself pretty, did laundry, and dishes, and decided for positive what i wanted to make for our big dinner, when suddenly, (hurray!) john came home early. he showered me with kisses and handed me a Sims 2 expansion pack (Ikea Home Stuff for my sims to have new furniture), a stuffed puppy, and a card. Wonderful gifts in my opinion since my sims are my only friends i hang out with here and he was considerate of that, and the things he wrote in the card were beautiful. he said all the right things and he said them right and i loved them. made me cry even cuz i'm such a sap. It was a simple day, not really all that extravagent...but we like it that way. That's how we are. I got him a video game that he's been wanting for a while and never thought he would actually get, so he was excited about that. Then we made dinner together. Breakfast for dinner. Waffles, sassage, and eggs. it was cute to watch him make the eggs.
i love having such a great husband.