Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I wouldn't call my self a "romantic," so Valentine's Day has never been a really big deal for me. Nice for Matt, huh? He's off the hook to come up with some grand gesture. He did get me some Valentine's treats at the grocery store :) His specialty. I do appreciate that V-day brings out the special treatment for some ladies that enjoys it - my brother made his girlfriend a nice dinner last night - how sweet.

I received two really nice Valentine's Day gifts this year. My mom made me this wreath. Isn't it pretty? It gave me the kick in the pants I needed to take down my Christmas wreath and put this one in its place.

My mother-in-law sent us a gift card to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants (one we can't usually afford often)!

I made these. YUM. I, like other blog friends, attempted these delicious treats after reading Darby's blog about them.

Just a warning - if you have no willpower (like me) - this will be a hard recipe to make. I made the mistake of opening the chocolate chips while I was making the peppermint mixture and ended up eating half of a bag. Oops. Good thing I bought too many of them.

A second warning - I have one word to describe this recipe if you, like me, are not a melted chocolate expert. MESSY.

I used fat-free sweetened condensed milk and thought they still tasted good. You might notice a difference so don't take my word on it.

Of course I wasn't prepared completely and didn't have any wax paper. Good thing I had this SILPAT liner. One of my unexpected favorite wedding gifts.

On my first attempt, I used these pans. Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention to the chocolate and burned it. Dang. I used it anyway (hopefully nobody will notice?). I put chocolate in the bottom, froze it, then added a patty. I then put chocolate on top and froze them again.

I melted more chocolate. On my second attempt, I tried to dip the patties in the chocolate as the recipe says. See patties on the right in the picture below.

On my third attempt, I ended up just putting a dollop of chocolate on top of each patty. See patties on the left in the picture below.

When I was done, I froze the (very few) remaining chocolate chips just like my Grandma does :) I'll let you know what Matt thought when they're frozen enough for him to try!

On another note, it was 40 degrees here today...that's right - 40 (above 0)! I ran in a short sleeved t-shirt (I'm crazy I know). It's supposed to be a high of 11 tomorrow, which means all those puddles that formed today will turn into solid ice (yipee).

xoxo