So this is what Love feels like! Our First Valentine’s! 🌹

This week Dory & I celebrated our first Valentine’s together, and actually it was my first Valentine’s ever!!! As sad as it is, I’ve managed to get to nearly 34 years of age without ever receiving a card, a gift, or even being in a proper relationship whenever the inevitable day comes around, so of course Dory was going to pull out all the stops to make this one extra special…although this being us, nothing is ever that straightforward!

I decided to get creative with Dory’s present and went with a chocolate bouquet filled with her fav chocs (Toblerone, Galaxy Ripples & Cadbury’s Creme Eggs) and also a ‘Year of dates’ book with a special date arranged every month for a year (these included Harry Potter Studios, Ice-Skating, Pottery Painting, Ringoing & a trip to the planetarium etc….) with pictures arranged scrapbook stylee to feature said date/event planned! I also printed out a coupon which entitled her to a proper massage & facial by moi (I thought I’d better as I am trained, and she has been pestering me ever since we got together!) and a pack of face masks which were on 3 for 2 at Superdrug!! This was all finished off with a card I designed at https://www.funkypigeon.com/Personalised.aspx?&gclid=CNXVtqKul9ICFcMW0wodhw4FPA The chocolate bouquet was easy! I won’t do a step by step guide as I wasn’t patient enough to take pictures as I went, but I’ll give you a brief explanation. I bought 3 plastic roses in cones (3 for £1 in card factory) and we already had some other plastic roses at home. I attached the ripples to the cones using sellotape and stuffed the creme eggs in the top so they were sat in the middle of the rose petals. I then but all of it together, along with the Toblerone, and then used even more sellotape to secure it all. Wrap in tissue paper and pop into a gift bag. Voila!You can get more creative if you like, this was just a lastminute.com idea after searching for ‘Valentines ideas’ on Pinterest the night before!

The year of dates book didn’t quite go according to plan. This was another idea found on Pinterest, and I’d planned to get really creative with scrapbook stickers, 3D pictures and special writing with coloured pens…just to show some effort had been put in to it. In reality, however I ended up with just a few printed pictures and hand written writing in black biro! I guess I shouldn’t have left it so last minute, but I usually work well under pressure, although this particular occasion was just plain stressful! I’ll just say now, the Range’s slogan “if we don’t sell it, you won’t need it” what a load of rubbish! Well I DID need it, and they didn’t sell it!! But anyway I found the pictures I wanted to use on the laptop instead, and on Sunday I went to my Mum & Dads to use their printer, only to discover they were all out of ink (how bloody inconsiderate!) so I waited til Monday to go to the local library and uses theirs. I was on the computer over half an hour copy & pasting, Dory used the time to sit in the children’s corner picking out new books for the little dude, and when I was finally done I clicked ‘print’ logged out of my session and went to collect my pages, only to realise that the printers were defaulted to Black & White copies! Arghhhhhh! So I’d logged out and nothing was saved and I didn’t have the time to do the same thing over again! Luckily for me I have an amazing friend who works in a school, so I emailed them over and she sneakily printed out my pages so I could complete my book later! Oh and just while we are on the subject, what is the deal with ink costing so much money?! In fact a new printer WITH ink included works out cheaper than just ink, talk about false economy!!Dory’s presents were a little less disastrous! She did the little dude and I a treasure hunt which included chocolate at every clue, gave me a load of scratch cards on a sign that read “I won the lottery when I met you” (we love a bit of cheese!) a picture of us in a frame, with the lyrics to our favourite song ‘I wanna grow old with you’ from the wedding singer on the outside, some heart balloons made from modelling balloons I’d bought her at Christmas (her first attempt of a bunch of flowers was an epic fail!) and finally a dozen red roses delivered to my work as a surprise. The only hitch was that there were only 11 roses, and not 12….but a quick tweet and a couple of funny messages later got us a brand new bouquet delivered yesterday, and yes there was definitely the full dozen this time!We topped the evening off with a romantic Dominos (we demolished the ‘feed a family of 4 for £5.50pp deal’ between us….yes we can eat!!) and I finally gave my little love bird her first proper massage, just to shut her up!! Who says romance is dead?! It really was the perfect Valentine’s Day, and I feel lucky to be with such a hopeless romantic. Looking forward to many more together.