be mine,valentine

As I’ve mentioned before, I love Valentine’s Day! I’m such a girly girl at heart, and I love any excuse to wear lots of pink and red attire. (Plus, the chocolate and flowers part of it isn’t so bad either, let’s be honest.)

But Valentine’s Day isn’t just for us girls, right? We can do things for our guy Valentines too! I like to get a little creative on occasions like these, find opportunities to cook something interesting or make a DIY gift rather than purchase a card from the seasonal aisle of CVS. I think I’ve only bought one or two actual cards from stores for my boyfriend- I usually make cards out of collages instead, cut up from back issues of Vogue or Real Simple. But then again, that’s always been my style: making pop tarts from scratch on a birthday morning, or hand-crafting a fitness journal, complete with handwritten protein shake recipes, as a pre-Warrior Dash training gift. There’s something about taking time to make something – time speaks louder than money.

Anyway, Boyfriend is working a bit later this evening so I am going to take advantage of the opportunity to cook him a surprise romantic dinner. And since he reads this blog, I can’t write about what it is, yet. So instead, I’ll talk about Valentine’s Days in years past!

This is our 5th (omgzwhaaaat!) Valentine’s Day together. For our first one, I surprised him with homemade chocolate truffles:

I was soooo proud of these truffles, mostly because they took SO long to make. (And by that, I mean I had to wait SO long for them to harden in the fridge before I could taste one.) I found the recipe originally from Food Network’s website (courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa), but I adapted it slightly to suit my pantry’s ingredients. I omitted the Grand Marnier, but her recipe says it’s optional anyway. I also added toasted almonds and coconut to the toppings (in addition to the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder.)

During our first Valentine’s Day together, we were both grad students at Boston University. I remember sitting in class when Connor texted: Our photo is on the BU Today website and my professor just pulled it up in class as a good example of lighting.

Turns out that a BU campus photog had snapped our picture while we were walking to class:

The link to the website is still live today, and it makes me smile to see it, especially the caption: “Candy hearts, roses, or fancy dinners may make you all aflutter, but for some, simply holding hands makes the heart melt.” True story.

Back to present day, the Valentine’s Day festivities officially began yesterday evening with this post-work surprise:

Neither of us can entirely figure out what type of flowers these are, but I absolutely love them- they’re so unique and beautiful. And, anyone who knows me knows that peppermint + chocolate = best combination ever.

Honestly, is there no better way to the female heart than chocolate? Real talk.

Reader Question(s):

• What are you doing to celebrate Valentine’s Day?
• What is your favorite type of chocolate?