Our Valentine’s Day At Home

Well… Valentine’s Day is officially over!  Only 364 more days until the next one.  😉  Our Valentine’s Day this year was no different from our other ones, but they’re just how I like them.  Last year, Jacob cooked a fancy dinner, and this year, he cooked for us again.  This year though, I requested steaks and potatoes because I just love the way he cooks the steaks, and we hadn’t had them in a while, so it was definitely time.

When he was on the way home from work, I jetted off to Pier 1 quickly to grab some red and gold plates I saw online that were on Clearance!  Score!!  I thought they would be the perfect festive touch to our dinner.  I picked them up along with some appetizer plates and set them up on our table before dinner.  *We ended up eating at our breakfast room table instead, but I just loved how the red looked with the animal print.  😉

Aren’t the plates just the cutest??  They’re absolutely perfect for Valentine’s Day, and those appetizer plates are so gorgeous.  You know how much I love white and gold together, so I just had to grab these too… on clearance of course!  The XO plates are also great for eating dessert, so maybe they’ll pull double duty and we can use them for our anniversary dessert.  Good thinking, huh?!  That’s how I like to plan and justify it of course.  Don’t you do the same?!

In case you’re wondering, the gold flatware is also from Pier 1.  I received them a couple of years ago as a Christmas gift from my mom, and I absolutely love them still!

We don’t usually do gifts for Valentine’s Day… well, not much anyways.  I picked up some chocolate for him, and he got me a little bit of chocolate as well.  He also picked up some cupcakes from one of my favorite bakeries in our city.  They were SO yummy!  He only got 4 cupcakes and to be honest, that was the perfect amount.  That way, I could satisfy my cravings for them, but not completely go crazy, since I am still trying to lose these last 15 pounds (more on that later).

We also exchanged cards.  I don’t know why, but I just love cards and feel like they are a must for any event (holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, just because, etc).  The messages inside and the fact that the card was specifically chosen for me is kind of a big deal.  This year I read my card, and it said, “…I’m so excited to keep making memories with you… maybe even in a a Jeep Cherokee.”

So here’s the backstory about the Jeep Cherokee:  The other day, we were running errands, and he asked me what kind of vehicle just passed by us.  I said that I wasn’t sure, but maybe it was a Jeep Cherokee.  I’m pretty good with cars (except Fords), so I figured I was probably correct.  I googled it and showed him pictures, and we decided that’s what it was.  He thought it “looked nice.”  Neither one of us needs a new vehicle, but I didn’t really think anything of it.  Then a little later he said I’ve been seeing those Jeep Cherokees everywhere, and of course, I’m not smart, so I told him about how I just read about that exact thing in a book I’m reading.  Basically, if you don’t know what something is, and then suddenly find out, you start seeing it everywhere, which was exactly what was happening with the Jeep.  I proceeded to tell him the name of what that was called and how that was so strange that I just read it in the book.

Anyways, so Jeeps are everywhere, and I am clueless.  Back to the card now, I still didn’t get it.  I thought he was just making a joke by writing that because we had been talking about them so much lately, and then he said there’s something else.  So I flipped the card over, and there was a picture of a Jeep Cherokee parked in the woods/snow.  I laughed and thought it was hilarious that he went so far as to print out a picture of one in the snow.  I’ve been telling him for MONTHS that I really miss the snow, and how I really want/need to see the mountains.

So then he surprised me and said we rented one for 5 days for our anniversary trip to Colorado.  So guess what that means???  We are taking a trip to the mountains to see the snow next month.  I started crying of course because I was so ecstatic and completely surprised.  I really didn’t think we would take a trip this year, so to find out that he planned one for us in Colorado was just so exciting.

This year, we’ll be celebrating 5 years of marriage and 8 million years together (okay, maybe more like 14 together).  Every year, I decided that we should take a trip to see a new state together, and then we buy each other a small gift with the anniversary theme.  The theme for the 5th year of marriage is wood.  We both decided that we would rip up our tile floors in our house (they’re everywhere and yucky and I loathe them), so that was going to be our gift to each other.  I didn’t think we were going to go on a trip to a new state since the wood floors will be quite pricey.

I had already told myself that we would make up for it later and maybe visit two states another time, but to my surprise last night, I found out that we will be going somewhere, and that place is Colorado!!!  The mountains are my favorite, and I haven’t seen snow in years.  I cannot wait, and I wish we were leaving tomorrow!!  I’m so excited to share my love for the mountains and the Rocky Mountain National Park with him.  He’s never been, so it’ll be really fun showing him all of my favorite places to go in Estes Park and of course making new memories with him.

Since we’re continuing our tradition of visiting a new state each year, I really want to buy (or make) one of these cute scratch off prints.  That way, we can keep track of each state we visit, so we know where we still need to go years later when we’re really old and can’t remember where all we’ve visited.  I think it’d be a really cute keepsake for us, so I might just have to make one or order it before our trip.

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We had a great Valentine’s Day at home, and I hope you had a nice one with your loved ones as well!