Be My Valentine

We had a great time celebrating Valentine's Day this year.  I think it is quite possibly becoming my favorite holiday.  It's definitely one of my top three: Christmas, Independence Day, and Valentine's Day.  We're also starting to have a few traditions with Valentine's Day.  For me it's all about showing love to my family.  And one fun way to do that is to make food in the shape of a heart.  For breakfast this year, I made heart shaped pancakes with heart-ish strawberry slices for the little miss before school.  And after I got her off for the day, I made the full meal for my valentine who was still snoozing away.  I think he enjoyed waking up to the smell of bacon and coffee. :)

We also made some time for reading valentine's from our friends and family.

For lunch, we joined the little miss in her kindergarten class for a valentine party.  We dined on hotdogs and root beer and had some valentine treats.  Then we watched and helped her open her valentines from her classmates.  That was a really fun time and we're glad that all 5 of us were able to spend it together.

Here she is with some of her friends from her class.

For dinner, I continued the heart theme but branched WAY out from previous years.  For the last two years now, I've just made a pizza in a heart shape.  But this year, I challenged myself by making homemade heart shaped cheese ravioli.  The kids loved it.  Of course, they love cheese and spaghetti so it's not too surprising.  And I was pleasantly surprised that, albeit a little time consuming, making homemade pasta isn't all that hard.  I do think that I'll need a pasta maker/sheeter attachment for my kitchenaide mixer the next time I want to do this though.  Making it "by hand" really made it a "labor" of love.

After dinner, we sent the kids on another valentine tradition of ours--a photo scavenger hunt.  Earlier in the day I went around the house taking pictures of different spots in our home.  We then printed them on our home printer and set up the hunt.  Some of the pictures were pretty obvious like this one, 

But then others I tried to make trickier.  Like this one,

They truly know our home, because they only hesitated on one picture.  When they got to the last hunt spot, they found three little packages, each with a valentine treat.

We hope you had a great Valentine's Day giving and receiving love to those you hold dear.