{ Valentine's Day }

Valentine's Day is so last week. I know.

Once upon a time, I thought that if I ever had the good fortune to be a stay-at-home wife, I'd blog, like, every day. Now I am in that season, and am continually astounded that I still blog so irregularly. Just yesterday, I was on the phone with my Mom, and she asked what I've been doing lately. My {incredibly intelligent} response: "Ummmmm...cooking...cleaning...the elliptical machine...church......uh, I really don't know. People always ask what I've been doing, and I always feel like I don't have anything very significant to tell them, but I'm always busy doing something!"

My Mom's {very comforting} comeback--she's been a stay-at-home-wife-then-mom since 1979: "That's just the way life is, kiddo!"

Back to Valentine's Day. I have no plausible excuse for writing this post a week after the fact. Remember the Great Wall Leak of January 2012? Nearly a month ago? Repairs took much longer than I expected: When they estimated 20 hours of work {if they didn't have to repaint the entire ceiling}, I assumed that to mean three days. I mean, c'mon, I was rounding up and giving them four whole extra hours, right?

It seems I've forgotten how long home improvement/repair projects take. Once the wet drywall was ripped out, it took several days for the walls to dry. Then the contractors had to schedule to come out and put in new drywall and spray texture. Then the texture had to dry. Then they had to schedule to come back and paint the replaced portions of the wall and ceiling. Then they had to schedule the manager-person to come out and see whether or not the ceiling paint color matched the rest of the ceiling closely enough {we had extra wall paint, but had never painted the ceiling, so they had to color-match it}. The manager-person agreed with us that the ceiling color definitely didn't match, so they scheduled the contractors to come back out and paint our entire living room/dining room ceiling. The next week.

I should pause here to say that the decision to paint the entire ceiling--at no expense to us--was met with much rejoicing by both Mike and Nikki. When we painted the walls last summer, there were several areas where we--ahem--splotched paint onto the ceiling. And being less-than-perfectionist-types when it comes to a sloped ceiling that is 25+ feet high at one end, we decided to live with a few spots on the ceiling rather than paint the entire ceiling. And now we're getting our entire ceiling painted for us, without having to do a thing!! Awesome!

So, they were scheduled to paint on Monday, the day before Valentine's Day. They called that morning and cancelled because the lead painter was sick. We rescheduled for Wednesday because we didn't want to have a freezing cold, paint-fumey house on Valentine's...I had planned to make a nice big dinner for Mike, and that would be impossible if I had to be out of the house all day to avoid paint fumes.

When I was growing up, V-Day was never an event for my family. Period. Mike, though vocally and vehemently opposed to the commercialism of what he calls "the holiday that Hallmark made up to generate revenue," has always made it a special day for me. He makes it very clear that he doesn't need a special day to show me how much he loves me, and that every day we're married is Valentine's Day. Sweet man. This year, I wanted to bless his socks off. I started with Pinterest {where else?} and used red-and-white baker's twine to tie doilies and construction paper hearts around different-sized Mason jars with candles in them. I made a little heart bunting strung on red yarn, and framed some Valentine-y printables I found on Pinterest and set them out.

Then we had to move everything out of the living and dining rooms in preparation for painting. *sigh*

I ended up filling the dining table with candles, temporarily hanging the bunting on the mantle, and putting most of the other stuff in our bedroom. It wasn't what I had envisioned, but it worked well.

The evening's menu:

Green salad with feta, walnuts, and cranberries

Pioneer Woman's ribeye steak with whiskey cream sauce

Pioneer Woman's twice baked potatoes

14 Hands 2009 merlot {or water, for the pregnant lady}

When Mike asked what I wanted for V-Day, I told him 1) flowers, and 2) chocolate ice cream. He came home with a dozen red roses, two half-gallons of frozen chocolatey decadence, and an assortment of candy bars to chop up and put on top. Needless to say, dessert was delicious! We finished the evening by watching "The Man from Snowy River," which Mike had never seen. In spite of no curtains and rooms stripped nearly bare, it was a really, really good Valentine's Day. The best yet.

P.S. The ceiling did actually get painted the following day! It looks beautiful. We have yet to re-hang the blinds and curtains, so we're still practicing exhibitionists working on 5+ weeks of bare windows, but for the most part the house is back together.