My Sleepy Valentine

I am writing this late. I just washed a bunch of laundry (well... Mike washed a bunch of laundry and I sort of helped fold it) yesterday and I was looking at the place mats that I made last week just in time for our Valentine's Day dinner. Seriously, I finished about one hour before.


I decided I wanted to make these as soon as I bought the Alexander Henry fabric a few weeks ago. It took me just a bit of time to find the stuff I wanted to coordinate it with. The piecing was easy peasy! I just did 3" strips of the hearts, 2 1/2" strips of the pink and black, and 1" strips of the white. I sewed them all directly to the red flannel (I bought 10 yards of it on the last JoAnn's after Thanksgiving $.99 flannel extravaganza) that I was using as a thin batting. It gave it the perfect amount of quilting. I backed them in a nice rosy pink and then did a piano key stiped binding. They are cute. I only got three done, because I calculated 3" short on the black and white binding. Good thing the Van Wagoner family is only 3. :) The unfinished was thrown on the WIP pile and will hopefully be done by next year.

We had a great dinner. I was in charge of dessert and Mike handled the rest. Boy, did he out do himself. Mama Mia!


We had a beautiful salad, asparagus with Parmesan cheese, and steak (no, those are not salad plates, the steaks were that huge). I also rolled my very first sushi. These were just simple rolls... cucumber, avocado, and crab in a delicious garlic sauce. Yummy. And, mine don't look so bad... not good, but not bad.


Cohen didn't last very long. He didn't want anything we were eating, so he ate yogurt and chicken nuggets. Delicious. He was, however, quite excited about dessert. I made brownies, topped with ice cream and hot fudge. Of course, after all that food, Mike and I saved ours until about midnight.

This is Mike (sorry I put this picture up - your blog premiere) announcing dessert... look at the excited kid in the background!

He is now heavily concentrating on eating all of it.

The rubbing of the eyes.

So drowsy he can't handle it.

What was left of his dessert.

Mission aborted. He put up a good fight against his giant brownie. This actually worked well for us because Cohen's early bedtime allowed for a nice, quiet evening. We had a great Valentine's day. We didn't buy gifts, just sat around the table and enjoyed each other... oh, and ate WAY TOO MUCH.