Valentine's Day

Since Randy and I have been together since (gulp) high school, we've run through the gamut of Valentine's Day gifts. We finally figured out that we were tired of drinking the Hallmark kool-aid and didn't enjoy how commercialized the day had become. We decided that moving forward, it would be more about time spent together rather than stuffed animals or heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. Suddenly the holiday became so much more fun as each year we chose fun things to do together: a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, watching the Phantom of the Opera, having dinner on the Napa Valley Wine train. It is so much more rewarding to spend Valentine's Day creating memories than just exchanging cheesy gifts!

Now that we're parents I want to pass this on to my kids - Valentine's Day should be a day to celebrate love and those we care about in a fun way. This is the first year that Cruz sort of understands what Valentine's Day is and I noticed that he associates the heart shape with the holiday. I thought it would be fun to use the heart theme for a Valentine's Day dinner for Randy and Cruz. But first, since Cruz eats breakfast at daycare, I made him his favorite blueberry muffins but this time heart-shaped:

For dinner I made "Love Pasta" with adorable pink and white heart-shaped pasta that I found at World Market.

I served it on festive plates from Target that now we can use every year.

Cruz is his mother's son and loves chocolate so I made brownies and cut them out into hearts, and served them with strawberry ice cream.

Despite being simple, every day kind of food, making everything heart shaped made it look and feel special. I had so much fun making this meal for my family and I think they enjoyed it too. I always say "food is love"...Valentine's Day or not!

My 3 Valentines: