Loving Gifts

February is the time of love.  And for some reason, that translates to be a lot of Chik Flicks watched during this time for me.  It's the time to show those you love how much you care.  Some go extravagant, others more simple, depending on taste and budgetary constraints.  This year we decided to keep it on the simple side.  Starting Feb 1, I put a cut-out heart on the entertainment center in the family room, where Brandon could see it clearly, and added another heart each day until Valentine's Day.  On each heart, I wrote down one thing I loved about him.  I also attached his favorite candy bar so he could have a yummy treat, too. I thought it turned out really great.  It was fun sneaking the hearts on there so he wouldn't see me doing it.  

The next thing I did was make a cake.  This was my first try making a layered cake and decorating it (mostly figuring out if I have enough icing).  The recipe was one of our wedding cake flavors and supper yummy. The real reason I made one was to practice making a cake for Brandon's birthday. So when I was telling my mom about making a cake for Valentine's Day she told me how to make a heart-shaped cake really easily:  use a square pan for the main body and a round pan where the diameter is roughly the same length as one of the sides of the square.  After the cake cools, set the square diagonally (to make the point of the heart).  Cut the round cake in half and set each half on two adjacent corners.  Ice it up and you get something like this:

I used a Twix bar for the "I" and M&Ms for the other letters and decorating.  It was actually Kayla that decided it needed more M&Ms, so she helped me put them on. It was a lot of fun and she got to eat her favorite food: chocolate.  I was planning on doing regular white icing, but she also convinced me that it needed to be pink. Very pink.  My girl loves pink...

Since Valentine's Day this year was on a Friday, I decided that I did NOT want to go out for dinner.  It would be too crowded and too long of a wait.  So we went out for lunch (the Pretzel-maker) and I made dinner. Brandon went out with Kayla to get some things I needed to make dinner, and came back with this:

Who picked out the pink mini-roses, do you ask? Why Kayla of course! And I love them. They smell wonderful. Brandon was really sweet to get them.  He doesn't like getting cut flowers because they don't last as long as potted ones.  If you ask me, I think it's a risk on those potted ones, too. I'm no green thumb. We'll see how long these last...

And since there haven't been any pictures of Kayla this entire post (crazy I know!) I figured I can show a recent video of a Kayla and Daddy Play Time session. Warning: there is squealing.