Valentine's Day Getaway!

I must admit, Todd is not the romantic type (then again, are there any guys who truly are??)... but when he wants to, he can be!  On Monday afternoon, these roses arrived at the door....

With this note....

So, yesterday we left for Santa Ynez/Santa Barbara for the night (beaches and wine country in Southern California)!  We walked around the little streets and in and out of wine tasting rooms and shops in Solvang.  It's a little danish-style town where all the wineries have tasting rooms.

Wind blown and struggling to do a self portrait -
hate it, but don't have any others unfortunately!

I have been trying to figure out what to do with the remnants of tin tile from our backsplash.  While in one of the shops, I found this....

Oh, and this amazing chandelier with shade that I am wanting to recreate in one of our upstairs rooms!

Had to take this picture discreetly! ;)

What started so fun went downhill quickly....our dinner reservations were lost, and having a huge gluten allergy made it near impossible to find a replacement so we had dinner at the bar in our hotel....romantic, right??  Todd caught three different basketball games during dinner, so I'm sure he wasn't that upset!  That is, until whatever we ate made him sick .... which was a complete role reversal!  Usually, I am the one on vacation sick because I unintentionally ate something I am allergic to!  Luckily, Todd made a full recovery by this morning!  We headed to Santa Barbara and spent the day there shopping for a watch for Todd and ate at an Italian restaurant where I had an amazing gluten free pasta for lunch!

For Valentine's Day, I thought we were doing our normal thoughtful $20 gifts (since we buy everything large ticket anyway, and that's almost too easy).  So, I designed and printed our First Dance song lyrics and decoupaged them to canvases.  Todd picked "Georgia on my Mind" as our wedding song because that is what he would text it to me while we were dating long distance.  So, while I was busy decoupaging my little heart out....

....Todd was purchasing these .75 carat princess cut diamond earrings to match my ring!

I'm starting to get the trend here.  For our anniversary, I made Todd something out of cotton as it was out second year together and that is the traditional gift.  Todd came home bearing gluten free baking classes with Jim Dodge.  For Christmas, I decided I would get him back by breaking the budget and getting him the SodaStream he had been talking about for the previous year, and you guessed it....he showed me up with a sewing machine and stocking stuffers.  So, I thought we were back to our old thoughtful gift song and dance for Valentine's Day, but apparently not!!  Unfortunately, I am not sure I can top this four prong Valentine's day anytime soon.....diamonds, dinner, roses, and a night away!  I'm feeling a little spoiled right now, and I LOVE it!!

Valentines Day & Laundry

I know you are curious what Valentine's Day and laundry have in common...in our house they are both things I love and are full of pink and red!!  Okay, maybe I don't love laundry, but I LOVE our laundry room (or MY laundry room)!!

Here is what it looked like before when we saw it on our house hunting trip while the previous family was still here (this really isn't even in all of it's glory...the opposite wall had a life-size mural of a clothes line with womens' lingerie and Abercrombie t-shirts on it):

...and this is what it looks like now!

I didn't realize how drastic the change was until I just posted those next to each other!!  We purchased cherry red washer and dryer units, painted the walls "Bella Pink", tiled the floor to match the rest of the tile in that hallway, and gave it a good scrubbing!!

This is what replaced the wall with the mural:

...and this is my most recent craft project!  Todd only owns three different socks in multiple quantities, and somehow they are always missing their partner!

The first project on my new sewing machine is going to be a window covering for the laundry room!  Todd and I did some shopping in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood last week to find a sewing table.  This is what we came home with (the chair is from our garage and isn't staying):

Along with all of the fun laundry activities going on this house (no, really - I loved redoing the laundry room...it was a small and manageable project!) have been Valentine's day festivities!  After getting some inspiration from Pinterest, I made this cute felt heart wreath to take the place of the pine wreath that just came down after the holidays.  [As if I needed to add another project to my list]

...and if you give a mouse a cookie...he will want to decorate the entire kitchen....

:o)