February Lovin': Part Two

I have a serious love hate relationship with Valentines' Day.  

I love the concept of celebrating love.

I hate that pressure to find a valentine, as if you need a valentine to feel loved.

I love the valentines' day ritual of passing out valentines to everybody in class in elementary school.

I hate that by the time you're 13 you have to find your very own valentine and it's not cool to share.

I love that my mom was my real valentine while growing up.

I hate being enticed when I go to CVS to get photos developed or Target to get laundry detergent to also impulsively buy cheap chocolate that screams your name as soon as you enter through those automatic doors.

I love chocolate, even if it's cheap. Sometimes especially when it's cheap.

I hate that others can dictate to me when to be romantic.

I love flowers.

I hate that it's a shamelessly corporate holiday.

I love watching girls walk around with bouquets of flowers.

I hate that I undeniably love corporate holidays.

Most of all:

I love my valentine.

I hate that I can't be with him every day.

I hate that I couldn't be with him this Valentines day.

I hate that Valentines day made me miss him even more than I usually do.

Annnd we're done with emotional quandaries!

I just had to get that all out of my system.

...

So Cubby and I certainly did not celebrate Valentine's day on Valentine's day.

I spent the day 'studying' alongside my other best-friend-valentine, Lauren, in the Library. Cubby spent the day taking a test and studying at USC. *tear*

Productive studying: making it rain with flash-cards.

Because I had Lauren as a valentine, we did manage to find us some good chocolate.

We were craving chocolate so much that we packed up and headed to Albertson's to grab Ghirardelli Chocolate Brownie Mix. While the brownies baked, we made coffee and watched The Best Thing I Ever Ate CHOCOLATE EDITION on the Food Network. 

Then we gorged on brownies.

Meanwhile.

Cubby and decided that we're not just not celebrating Valentines day but that we're boycotting it.

And we have a cooler holiday all to ourselves this weekend, called ULTRA SUPER VALENTINES DAY.

It's going to be blog worthy.

...

I also must note that I had Cubs and Ethan and Lauren over this weekend for a valentinesesque dinner at the cottage. 

The dinner was inspired by these:

[Taken from FoodSpotting]

Because A) you can't just walk past Moose Pasta and not just grab it instinctively and put it in your big blue Ikea bag. And B) Cubby and I have a slight obsession with the word 'moose;' the way you make a kissing movement with your lips when you say it and how it is the name of our future crime fighting cat.

I bought the whole wheat ones though.

They were good! 

The plural of moose is moose. I prefer meece.

Posing for the camera.  

Sprinkles and doilies and TJ vintage root-beer.

Tea lights in pickle jars, old ribbon and paper hearts.

Lauren's cookie.

I actually made real meat meatballs! I didn't know if Ethan would like the soy ones (some boys are so soy-prejudice, you never know), so I got real meat balls from the store. They smelled good but they were SO disgusting to clean up. I had no idea that the grease was actually fat and that fat coagulates if you don't wash it right away. 

Lauren and I had the soy balls <3. 

I also wanted to try the Goddess dressing from TJs that Cubby obsesses about. I heard him discover over dinner that Tahini was the secret ingredient. It really is good dressing.

For dessert we decorated sugar cookies and made a fabulous mess.

And I just finished the last of the meece left overs today for lunch!