Celebrate!

I love having things to celebrate; holidays, birthdays, the big game, award shows...Fridays. So I was extremely excited when I had a celebration trifecta a couple weekends ago, my dad's birthday, the Super Bowl and the weekend before Valentines Day when we would have Carolina. I went into full planning mode. Red Velvet cupcakes that would be both birthday and Valentines day, the making of Valentine cards and a small get together to watch the Super Bowl. AS usual things didn't go exactly according to plan, my dad had to work so I wasn't able to see him on his birthday, but a friend of mine had her baby on that day so I still got to celebrate a birthday! Last year we had done Valentine cookies, which were fun, but very time consuming and so soon after Christmas cookies had me on cookie burnout. I was afraid that cupcakes would be more time consuming and have more room for error, but they turned out to be far simpler than the cookies and just as tasty. We simply used a red velvet cake mix and then let them cool in the fridge a couple hours. (Thank you to Kathy for that tip!)After a couple hours I got some cream cheese frosting in a can and in a convenient spray tube (think whipped cream) along with sprinkles and some Valentine Candy and we were good to go. The cupcakes took about 45 minutes to decorate and tasted great! Take a look below and please forgive us for the Christmas platter! :)




The next day was Super Bowl and we had a few friends come over. Isaac is the cook in our family and he made a fabulous homemade hummus. The Super Bowl marked the first time we were on opposites sides over who should win. Isaac is not the biggest football fan, generally only watching games that are accumpanied by beer and friends. He cheers for UT because they're the home team and the Dallas Cowboys because I tell him to. Usually before a game with neither of those teams participating, he'll just ask me "who are we cheering for" and I'll decide based on whatever criteria is important to me at that moment. Examples have been: hottness of quarterback, cities I've visited, or how badly they have beat Dallas in the past. This year my allegiance went to Indianapolis simply because of Peyton Manning. The man is hilarious and while many laud his SNL performance, which was excellent, I prefer his series of Visa commercials. The man obviously doesn't take himself to0 seriously and I like that. Isaac went for the sentimental favorite of New Orleans and upon learning I would be rooting for Indianapolis labeled me a hater of Katrina victims. I responded I did not hate Katrina victims I was simply choosing to support people forced to live in Indiana, a group of people so often forgotten. I mean come on, they have to live in a fly over state, where's their colored bracelet? This type of banter went on for the week leading up to the game and culminated in tshirts! It was fun though, and all banter was kept light hearted, with the exception of comparing me to Hitler, but I think he's just been watching too much Fox News. Carolina chose to support Indianapolis partly because I did and partly because she likes the color blue!




All in all a very successful weekend, and we celebrated the actual Valentines day in a much more low key fashion, but I think in the perfect way. Hanging out together watching movies!

So Happy Valentines Day and Happy Presidents Day everyone!
(Oh and my Presidents Day plug is for the HBO miniseries John Adams. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are perfect as John and Abigail Adams and the whole series was riveting and beautiful)