be more romantic

My seventh and “final” romantic gesture (“final” in the sense that I’m checking off this goal, rather than in the sense that I’ll never make another romantic gesture again) was to make a “romantic credit card” and put it in his wallet. He hasn’t found it yet, and I expect he probably won’t find it for a few weeks since I put it “way in the back.”

I made it from one of those fake credit cards you get with a credit card application in the mail. Well, this one was actually from an insurance company, but you get the idea. I tried to keep as much of the original text as possible, and I used parts of a blank, white, stick-on mailing label to cover & write over the rest. Now the card indicates it is redeemable for something from me. I’ve attached a photo of the original card; the altered card is too naughty to post here :-)

Anyway, I’ll keep y’all updated on my further romantic gestures, but I’m checking this off my list!

DH is gone this week, so this is my chance to plan something. Maybe I can come up with something romantic to do on our camping trip. But I have to be mindful of the fact that our friends will be there too and we’ll want to hang out with them.

OK, so it’s taken me more than a week to get to seven romantic gestures, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been generally romantic. I’ll mark this goal done when I reach seven. But I plan to keep posting after that whenever I have some good ideas. I just want to clear a little more space on my list.

I did two more things today. I woke him up with kisses, and I made him breakfast. (Just toast with butter and jam, but I usually leave him to fend for himself on weekdays.) Now I just need one more thing to make it up to seven.

That’s right, I didn’t do anything special yesterday so today I did two things.

This morning, I made a little drawing in MS paint that featured stick-figure versions of both of us on a grassy hill, surrounded by things made out of hearts (e.g. flowers, the sun…) and I typed in “When you are around, things are just love-ly” or something like that. I changed his computer wallpaper to be that picture. He thought it was cute.

In the evening I made a really long strip of paper and wrote on it a thank-you note in appreciation of him always being in charge of washing the dishes. Then I wrapped it around the bottle of liquid dish detergent we keep by the sink. He hasn’t found it yet.

Yesterday I served dinner with his rice formed into heart-shaped patties (thank you, cookie cutter.) Today I sent him an e-card.

To me, romance is doing something that shows your significant other that you were thinking about him/her while they weren’t around. And whether that means you planned a fancy dinner or just made some little doodles on a napkin, it doesn’t really matter.

I want to bring this goal a little more into focus in my life. So, to kickstart this goal I am going to do something romantic for DH every day for a week. I can do it :-)

DH is out of town for a conference for a few days, so I’d like to have something nice waiting for him when he gets back…but what?

This is my last chance! He’s been out of town a couple times in the past few weeks for job interviews, but I haven’t done anything special, even though I’ve thought about it.

Whoa, this entry is a long one…

Most of my Valentine’s Day efforts this year revolved around food.

For breakfast, I made toast, and used a cookie cutter to cut out a heartshape in the center of each piece. I fried an egg in the center of each piece and put red jam on the cutout parts. I also made some sausage patties which I intended to cut out into heart shapes, but I made DH do it instead :-)

For lunch we had a lovely picnic. Since it’s freeeezing here, we just had it in our living room, but I put down a blanket and opened the window shades so it was nice and sunny (also, I turned up the heater a little bit.) We had various deli meats and cheeses on french bread, along with some potato salad and ambrosia salad and a bit of wine. It was quite pleasant and much more convenient than a real picnic since the kitchen was just 5 feet away.

1. Shrimp cocktail
2. Cheese fondue
3. Baby spinach salad with port wine reduction (this dish was inspired by it’s counterpart served at the Top of the Hub restaurant in downtown Boston. The best part is the goat cheese!)
4. Herb and mustard lamb loins with garlic mashed potatoes (I used a cookie cutter to mold the mashed potatoes into a heart shape)
5. Chocolate fondue with peaches

As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of the fondue :-) As for wine, we had a nice white wine with the first two courses, red with the next two, and port with dessert. I think we did end up drinking a little too much…

Well, I was pretty proud of myself. I planned everything sufficiently that I could hop up and quickly assemble each course as it came up, and I could mostly just sit back and enjoy the romantic dinner. I sure am looking forward to hosting fancy dinner parties when we eventually buy a house!

Too bad it’s on a Tuesday this year. I’d better start planning! I want to make sure and get (or make) a card for DH this year. Last year I didn’t get him one and I felt terrible.

...for a nice romantic evening together, but I’m having trouble figuring out when to do it. DH plays World of Warcraft and he’s scheduled every week for a raid on Friday night and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. This drives me crazy because it means the prime ‘date nights’ are taken. Every week. What drives me even more crazy is that he actually allows his WoW schedule to dictate his real-life schedule. Grrr. This week he is actually taking off Friday night, but that’s because we have plans with some friends.

I’ve already tried to talk to him about this, in a sort of passing conversation. I didn’t want to make it a big deal but it looks like I am going to have to. That makes me sad.