Valentine Branch
I'm finally getting around to posting pics of my branch decorated for Valentine's Day.

I added a metallic heart garland this year and I left up many of the snowflake decorations that were up there for the winter holiday season, since February is a snowy month in most parts of the world.

I must say that the Valentine decorations are one of the sets that go best with the red sofa and other red accents in the room.

My pastel Easter Egg decorations are up now and I'm not sure what I'll do after that...

Any ideas?

If you haven't visited recently, be sure to scroll down and see the last post of Coffee Cup History below.

A belated Happy Valentine's Day to All!
As always, it's been a busy weekend! I even had today off to spend with my hubby! Yea!

So have I told you lately how much I LOVE flowers? They just make me so happy. And it doesn't have to be anything really expensive like roses or calla lilies or something. I love most any kind of flower. For Valentine's Day, Terry sent me a bouquet of red tulips and purple iris'. They arrived on Thursday all tightly closed but opened up beautifully over the last few days. They even look better today! I just love them! I have probably taken 100 or so pics of just the flowers in different settings and lighting and looks. Aren't they gorgeous? I LOVE them!

I also received some of my favorite chocolate (the Lindt Intense Orange - Dark Chocolate bars) Mmmmmm!
Saturday we had a quiet day at home and at night we made a nice dinner.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Melting Pot Restaurant which was really nice and a delicious meal. For those who have never been, it's all fondue and you basically prepare your meal yourself. Cheese fondue for dipping veggies, breads, etc. Hot savory vegetable broth for cooking your meats and seafood, then chocolate fondue for dipping all kinds of sweets. They are generally out of our price range, but we had a gift card which helped a lot.

Yes all those desserts were for just the two of us! We had a great meal!

Friday night we went to visit our friend, John Heath play at a local club nearby. We had dinner with him and our other friends, the Brunners before the concert too. I took a few pics and hope to post them soon.

Last night I was working on a new Hawaii photo book and worked on it until 3:30 am, which is unheard of for me. I just really wanted to get it finished so I could submit it for printing. Unfortunately, the program is having some issues right now and I can't seem to complete the process. I submitted the info to technical support, so let's pray that it all gets fixed tomorrow and that the whole thing wasn't lost. This one was over 90 pages, so I will just give up on it if it's lost.

Today Terry and I cleaned the garage. Not the most fun on a holiday, but we are certainly pleased that it is mostly finished and we can actually walk from one side of the space to the other without tripping over various obstacles. It's looking so much better! I'll try to post a before and after soon too. Oh, and I was doing a bit of sorting and came across some great old memorabilia, vintage coffee mugs, and special treasures from when the kids were little that I will also post soon. Just a little more to add to my growing list of pending posts.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Let me know what you did.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!! (a little late)

WOW, I am so far behind on blogging! I just uploaded the photos from my camera of the events over the last month that I haven't posted about. Here's the list. I may not get to all of them, but this will help me remember what I've missed so far.

• Super Bowl party
• Valentine's Day
• My February Branch - Valentine's decorations (pictured here)
  
• Phoenix Suns & Dallas Maverick's game
• My office and last day of work at Catalyst
• Building our new Ikea dresser
• ODF Valentine's Dinner - Here's one of Randy & Linda dancing. Don't they look like they're having fun? They're such a cute couple. See more on Linda's blog here

The one below is one of my favorite photos so far...this is the Christmas ornament that I gave to Terry the year of our 25th Anniversary. The photo is from our 25th Anniversary party that our friends planned for us. What great memories!

So, I have time at home until Feb 29th (when my father and mother-in-law arrive), but I know that there are so many projects to be done around the house (over 30 on the list) that I don't want to spend all my time on the computer (which I could easily do). So I'll just allot a little bit of time each day or so to post, so I can get other things done.

Here's what I've done so far, since yesterday:

• Built a new dresser for the scrapping room to store gift wrap and other craft supplies
• Scheduled carpet cleaning (since I'll be home next week)
• Finally ordered the bed that Terry offered to buy me for my birthday (last July). It's on sale!
• 3 loads of laundry
• Made a good dinner - pot roast and vegetables

O.k., I'm off to work on my next project. Today, I'll be taking down all my "winter" decorations and putting up the spring stuff, since it already feels like spring here and Easter is just around the corner.

Valentine's Day continued...

These are the flowers that Terry sent me for Valentine's Day. I just LOVE them! I was trying to capture the bench in the background of the photo too. And the key and heart hanging from the vase are so cool. The key is actually metal! I'm not sure what I'll do with them when the flowers are gone...maybe hang them in my scrapping room for inspiration.

I have so much more to blog about. We went to the Scottsdale Culinary Institute's L'Ecole restaurant for dinner on Friday night and I have pics of the food. I also stopped by the Scottsdale 5th Avenue Fine Art & Wine Festival on Saturday and have some pics from there as well. I hope to post more later and I'm off tomorrow so maybe I'll have time then! (yahoo!)

Valentines Day...

It's always a nice day for me. Terry's so sweet to always do something special. This year I was greeted with a beautiful card when I woke up. I was also the only one in my office to have flowers delivered. I'll have to take a picture of them tomorrow. They smell amazing! There's roses and tulips and other flowers that I can't remember right now. The red vase had a heart and key hanging from it. He gave me the "key to his heart". Isn't that sweet?

When I got home tonight, there was another card with 9 big chocolate covered strawberries...mmmmm. We don't usually go out ON Valentines Day because neither of us like to fight the crowds, so we made dinner at home. We had huge T-bone steaks, king crab legs, grilled red peppers and snap peas, pretzel bread and a nice glass of Red Truck California Syrah (I liked the label). It was all delicious! I only ate about 3 bites of my steak because there was so much other food. I'll have it another day. Besides, king crab is my absolute favorite. I don't have it often because its so expensive, but I bought this on sale a while ago and had it in the freezer, so what better time to have it than Valentine's Day.

Online I found a super simple way to cook the crab. I put the legs in a big ziploc bag with a wet paper towel, sealed it up and cooked it in the microwave for a few minutes. It comes out perfectly! I also picked up the pretzel bread at Trader Joe's today. I discovered it when I was in Germany a few years ago and it's so tasty. If you've never had it, give it a try sometime. It kind of tastes like a soft pretzel but fluffier and without the salt.

Well, Blogger isn't letting me upload the pics of the food, so I'll have to try that tomorrow.

Oh, and Friday night we're going out to dinner at L'Ecole, at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute to continue our Valentine's celebration. I've heard it's really fun. The students are the chefs in training and they make delicious fancy dishes. They come out and talk with you all about what you're eating and it's supposed to be quite an experience. I'll let you know...I may take my camera if it's not too weird for the people around us.