Be Mine

Who knew that handmade Valentines would replace the perfect card set in a dozen roses?


That pink heart-shaped pancakes are just as tasty as a steak dinner, or that hot chocolate with heart-shaped marshmallows and Red Vines for straws could be just as much fun as a bottle of wine?

Of course, there's still time to stop and smell the roses. Loving husband made sure of that.

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Valentine's Day the Sunshine Acres Way (In Which an Entire Day Turns Pink)

Breakfast: The day opens with pink heart-shaped pancakes. Blueberry pancakes except for the middle gent. He doesn't like "things" in his food. A side road, but a necessary one:The "I hope you have children just like you" curse zinged right past my picky sister and hit my house instead. I'm going to send him to her house at mealtimes and make her feed him.

Back to the topic at hand.

Lunch: Heart-shaped open-faced sandwiches topped with strawberry jam and peaches in heart-shaped dishes.

Valentine making party: Hot chocolate with marshmallows, served with Red Vines and those chalky little hearts in boxes. I may have taken a bit of creative license with the whole heart-shaped marshmallow thing above. Really two mugs of chocolate were topped with misshapen marshmallows that resembled hearts if you tilted your head and squinted your eyes. Everyone else got just plain ol' marshmallows. Obviously Martha Stewart and her beautiful-hot-chocolate-making buddies used a different kind marshmallows or a different cutter or something. We made Valentines while we sipped the chocolate and read the chalky hearts. Each person decorated one Valentine. I wrote a family member's name on the back of each Valentine, then we passed them around and wrote notes inside. Lovely. Fun. Easy. We also made Valentines for the neighbor because she's a lovely older woman with no grandchildren to make her Valentines.

Family Valentine Party: Games and sundaes. On a whim eleven-year-old lovely lady and I stopped at the store while out and about to buy pink sundae fixin's. Strawberry ice cream, strawberry topping, pink and purple sprinkles, whipped cream, and those disgusting maraschino cherries. Yummy! We built Valentine sundaes, read our Valentines and played games.

Valentine's Day took over the day a bit, but what the heck, it only happens once a year. And any holiday that celebrates love and togetherness is tops in my book, even though it's got an entirely different context than it had my single days.