Winner!

You guys are delivery guys.

I received a total of 15 comments -all of which I stuck in my back pocket and breathed a sigh of relief because when it comes to travel I’m overcome with anxiety. It’s hard to push through it and tap into my own creativity. So thank you for getting the process moving for me. I’ve been procrastinating it!

Random.org picked our winner: comment #15

Jewel wrote:

JEWEL!
Thank you for all of your ideas!

I wanted to post the winner yesterday (like I said I would -I’m such a pants-on-fire liar), but I ended up unexpectedly spending some quality hours with my husband at his work.
And then he stopped off at my favorite florist to pick up the bouquet he ordered… and then came out with TWO bouquets. It turns out two men love me enough to send me flowers.
My husband and my Dad!
I used both bouquets -neither of which contained roses because although roses are pretty, I’d rather not thankyouverymuch -to decorate our dinner table. This year’s Valentine’s Feast went off with about 300 hitches and was nearly cancelled three separate times.
(Moms, can you relate?)

And as we all sat down to dinner, I said to my husband, “I’m not doing this next year. I’m forcing this to happen and that’s not how I wanted this to be. No one else wants to do it as much as I do.”
“I want to do it,” my husband said.
“Thanks for offering, go for it next year.”
*BAM*

I started planning this year’s feast on February 15th, 2013. I collected things throughout the year to add… heart ramekins, a pretty vintage tablecloth from an antique store…
A few days before, I finalized a menu and then whisked myself off to the store where I bought fancy goblet-glasses and a $20 huge hunk o’ Salmon.
I spent almost $100.
It kind of makes me sick…

And by 5 o’clock I was yelling at the kids, stressing about the green beans, and fending off a baby who hasn’t stopped screaming for a week.
That’s when my phone rang, and I picked it up and told the man on the other line that I’m very sorry, but the dinner I’d been planning for a year just wasn’t going to happen.

It finally did (thanks to the hungry man on the other end of the phone line), and although it didn’t go off as perfectly as I’d fantasized (a flaw of mine -and Anne Shirley’s), it was a good experience.
(still not good enough to make me go back on my vow. There will be no feast put on by the likes of THESE hands come next year.)

Along with the salmon and green beans, we ate a spinach salad (well, my husband and I did -the kids just picked at it with their hands. Verdict: weird and yucky). For dessert, we dipped strawberries and marshmallows in chocolate while we watched Mormon Messages, and then the kids went to sleep while Mom and Dad finished off the strawberries and Martinelli.
We watched “Austenland” and laughed so hard we almost peed our pantaloons.

And then I woke up seven hours later on the couch with the big comforter from our bed tucked tightly around me… my husband loves me enough not to wake me when I crash and burn after a long day AND to sleep with a lighter blanket on a cold night so I Can have the warm one.

I love him too. I love him enough to make him an avocado breakfast even though I hate avocado (I’m actually thinking of starting a club?) and I love my kids enough to feed them fancy foods (fancy for US, I mean) even though they’ve brought to the brink of insanity and I love you enough to give you eValentines.
Designed by Yours Truly.

I hope your Valentine’s Day was filled with love of others, of self, and of chocolate.

The package one is indecent.
I’m not even sorry.