Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Love Is In The Air....







Originally posted 2-17-2011 on wordpress
There are many ideas on how Valentine's started, the most popular dates back to the Roman Empire.

When Claudius became emperor, he banned marriages because he feared men would refuse their duty to fight. Young couples would fall in love and secretly go see the Catholic Bishop Valentine. When Claudius found out, he had the Bishop arrested and ordered to be beheaded. While waiting in jail he began exchanging letters with the jailer's daughter. And wouldn't you know, he fell in love with her. The day he was to be beheaded, he wrote her one last letter and signed it, "from your Valentine".  Later when Christianity overtook Rome and Pope Gelasius set aside a day to honor the martyr St. Valentine. In 1969 the church removed St Valentine's day from its calendar but the holiday had long been popular and tradition continues.
Why is it we need an official day to say "I Love You"? We should show each other every day that we love one another. However, I am the first to say, it is nice to have that one special day set aside to do something extra special for the ones you love, I say ones  because you may have your children, family, friends, that you all love and adore.  Danny, my husband. ( I will call him husband number one for reference, you will see why at the end) started out nicely. He paid close attention to something that caught my eye. When I went down for my coffee Valentine's morning, this is what I saw:
This is so awesome!!! We love coffee, and I mean LOVE! We also LOVE tea. We have an electric tea kettle, but how nice is it to have it all in one. Hot water on demand. So far, I have used it for tea, cocoa and oatmeal. Cuisinart, you are amazing! This is the next best thing to what I would hope to have one day. The ones that actually go in your cabinet, and you push a button and get coffee, cappuccino, espresso, or hot water. And it has a warming draw for your cups. That would be luxury and 2k. So I will gladly enjoy my $69.99 (at Sam's) coffee/hotwater maker. Thanks bunches husband number one.
The rest of the day was peachy, except when a program was not working for our business and husband number one spent 4 hours with the help of the online tech getting it going. By this time, it had completely set the day back and the stress had begun. He came home after checking on a job, I had been preparing an awesome dinner for us and Abi and Lucas. Try as he may, husband number one, was still feeling the stresses of the day. We had a nice dinner and dessert, the kids (without asking!) helped clean up.
This picture took about 5 minutes for them to get serious enough.
We picked out a movie, sat down to watch it, and within 5 minutes, husband number one FELL ASLEEP. Not only did he fall asleep, he was snoring. The kids looked over at the same time I pinched his nose. He awoke for a few seconds, and went right back to snoring. After the third try of having him go on up to bed (because his snoring was drowning out our movie), husband number one went to bed. So there I sat, watching a movie at 9:30pm on Valentine's with my baby girl and her sweetheart. After taking the sweetheart home, I went to bed with husband number one still snoring :( I wish I would have thought to share those pictures with you. Now showing him some grace, I have decided, that he has to make up Valentines to me. I will keep you posted as to whether he goes from husband number one to husband #1.
I made over 10 dozen homemade peanut butter cups for our friends and family. But I also made these darling lollipops from left over mini Christmas candy canes. They are simple as pie and I wish I had bought more to have made many more at Christmas. Thanks to our friends Chuck and Lori for sharing what they had left with me.

Valentine Lollipops

melt one bag of white chocolate with 3 tbsp of vegetable oil in microwave on defrost mode, stir every 15 seconds until smooth. Add more oil, if needed, to get a syrup consistency


Lay candy canes out on wax paper in shape of a heart, insert stick in middle


spoon white chocolate in middle of heart, take a butter knife and spread gently to smooth out


Immediately apply your choice of sprinkles to center,after they set (which takes only 5-10 minutes, may take longer depending upon the temperature of kitchen and how thick./thin chocolate is) ready to eat or package in plastic candy bags.
That is all there is to it, great project for mommies and kiddos

Valentine Lollipops Recipe: Valentine Lollipops

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