A Romantic Valentines

When we were dating, Peter and I used to frequent some really nice restaurants in Atlanta and that was our normal thing to do. He was great about getting a date planned, the restaurant we’d eat at, as well as jazz music or a play afterward. It was always fun to look forward to. These day, we save the fancy meals for a special occasion and Valentines is one of those. My sweet hubby booked this dinner at Cafe Iz after he saw this special night advertised in the paper. They only do special events and this one was a 5-course dinner with live jazz music and we thoroughly enjoyed it, so I took some pics to remember it by. It was a sold out event.

The lucky folks at this large table got a huge flower arrangement in the center of the table.

The menu was just wonderful. I won’t bore you with all the course descriptions, but suffice it to say…I cleaned my plate on every one.

This was the first course of corn soup and Caprese salad.

2nd course of halibut sitting on a bed of lobster orzo. Can you say yum!

3rd course was wild mushroom ravioli.

A quick and blurry pic of my sweetie.

4th course, beef tenderloin with spinach and fingerling potatoes.

And dessert was raspberry torte (notice the heart-shape) and chocolate molten cake.

And yes, it was every bit as good as it looks! Hope you had a memorable Valentines too.

I've posted 2 today, so check out the post below also!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day is a special day! Time to snuggle up next to your sweetie and let him know how important and special he is to you. My sweetie gave me one of my favorites, Turtles, in a pretty red satin box and tonight we’re going out for a cozy and romantic Valentine’s dinner at Cafe Iz, where we’ll enjoy a delicious meal and some live jazz music. A night for lovers!

I happen to be married to one of the sweetest guys (evah!) who loves to celebrate Valentines Day and he brought home these stunning tulips for me. I adore tulips and these are just remarkable!

He’s wonderful and I couldn’t ask for better. He spoils me all the time, not only did he bring home tulips….

But, a dozen red roses too. Red is for love.

And here’s what I gave him. Plenty of chocolate candy (he loves it!), hot chocolate mix, and Jasmine tea, which he also loves, along with a card. It’s fun to spoil our guys too on this special day.

Enjoy your day and give your hubby an extra smooch or three!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hearts and flowers for a wife who just gets sweeter,

From your loving husband, Peter

My hubby was as excited as a kid when he found out I was making him a cake. I don't think I could have given him anything he would have liked better than this. Now, if you you're on a diet, do not make this cake. If you want to try something that is decadent, fattening, and oh, so delicious, do it! My heart-shaped pan worked out pretty good (it oozed out the bottom, but that was fine, I just sliced it off) and the cake was still a little warm when I put on the frosting. The frosting has espresso, which my hubby also loves, so he is going to be in hog heaven for a few days.
There was plenty of batter to make another single layer, so I decorated it with a big fat strawberry.
My sweetie sent me a beautiful bouquet of tulips and I just love them. Pink, red & white! Perfect for Valentines, along with that sweet note above.
So, it's gonna be a chocolate Valentine's Day for us! We celebrated last weekend too, check it out below.
Who needs Napa Valley, when we have Morgan Creek Winery...yep, you heard it right, we have a winery right here in Alabama and they make muscadine and blueberry wine. We discovered this sweet little winery 2 summers ago when we first moved over here. We saw in the paper that they have concerts once a month during the summer, with wine tastings, music, and fireworks, so we went to check it out and have been going back ever since. You pay to get in, bring your own lawn chairs, a picnic, or you can buy food there, sit under the stars and enjoy some good jazz/oldies music. Very relaxing time!
It's out in Harpersville, in the country and in such a pretty setting. This is a family owned winery and they've been in business for a few years now.

So, when I read they were doing chocolates and wine tasting for Valentines, me and hubby dropped by for a little visit last Saturday, on a beautiful blue-sky day. We've done the tastings a few times and really love the muscadine wines. We are not wine connoisseurs by any means, in fact don't imbibe much at all, but these muscadine wines are so good. We both can't stand dry wines and these are very sweet and delicious.

This is the shop which sits in front of the winery itself. Come on in for a tour!
There were about 10 people in our little tour. We've done it before, but it's always neat to see how they make it. They brought their equipment over from Italy several years ago and an Italian winemaker came over to help them get their winery up and running. I think that's SO cool! Those big vats hold the wine, it goes through all the steps and ends up in the bottling equipment to the left, where it is labeled and capped, ready for distribution. Our local Publix carries these wines most all the time. She did tell me that they cannot ship out of state at this time, but hope to be able to later this year.
Who knew?? Muscadine wines in Alabama! And you thought we were just hillbillies down here!
All the wines for the tasting. They were very good and we have a couple of favorites, Carlos and Regal Red.


Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! Enjoy the day with your sweeties.


Head over to Dana's Designs, a new blog friend of mine, and check out her chalkboard projects. She'd love to hear from anyone who has done one of these & would like to get some pics & there may be a giveaway! Check her out!

Valentines Treat & How I Met My Man

Doesn't this look yummy? I'm actually planning ahead this year and am going to make this delectible dessert for my man for Valentines Day. He loves chocolate, so this will be a winner, I'm quite sure. And it looks so pretty too. I'm going to take a shortcut on the swirled heart on top with something store bought, but the recipe actually shows how to make those too. And, I already have a heart-shaped pan that came with my Pampered Chef cheesecake pan, so I'm ready to go. So, in case you were wondering what to do for your sweetie for Valentines, here's your chance to impress & make him swoon with delight. Chocolate cake always gets my man! You know they say that the way to a man's heart is through his tummy...well, I think that's absolutely true.
Here's the recipe, I scanned it for you, so click to open it and copy from here. This is from the February '08 Country Home magazine. (me and my honey in May, '05, Seaside, FL just before we got married in June)

On a related note, I've been tagged by Judy at Gracious Southern Living, Steph at It's Toile, Ya'll, and Fran at Frannycakes, to share how I met my hubby. So, it's pretty short and sweet and not all that exciting, but I'll tell you just how it all came about.

After a 9 year marriage in Atlanta, I had just gone through a long 2 year separation and very painful divorce in 2004. After my divorce, I had started doing some dating online. That's the new way of dating in case you haven't heard and that seemed to be a good way to meet men without having to go out to places I did not want to go to meet them. I only wanted to date a solid Christian man. Online dating has really gained in popularity over the last few years and since I was older, it seemed to be the best way to ease back into the dating scene again. And let me just say, I really don't like the dating process at all. It's tedious, deflating, and just plain not fun most of the time. I've always just wanted to be settled down with one man, my man and not have to go through all the dating games. I didn't get married at all until my 30's, so I had plenty of years of dating behind me. I wasn't particularly looking forward to more. Although it was fun at first and I went out with a lot of guys while online dating, I quickly grew tired of the dating scene.

I met my husband, Peter on a Christian online dating service called Christian Cafe, in September of 2004. He had lost his wife of 23 years to cancer only 3 years before, so we both had been through some very painful times and were both emotionally bruised. We started dating pretty exclusively. He wined and dined me, wooing me until I fell for him! We allowed love to grow and and as we went forward, we made the mistake of trying to rush things too fast as far as getting married too quickly and we went through some very tough times with all of that in the beginning months of our relationship. But we got past it all and continued to date and get to know each other better and decided on June of 2005 for our wedding. It was still pretty fast, but we are going on 3 years of marriage now. It hasn't been without its ups and downs. Blended familes and marrying when you are older presents a lot more challenges than when you are young, in love, and doing it all for the first time, so no rose-colored glasses for us. You have to see each other in reality and not a fantasy world.

My hubby is very smart, ambitious, hard-working and fun to be around. He keeps up daily with finance, politics, and religion and I can be sure he will keep me informed on the important things that are happening around the world, since I'm usually caught up in more mundane things like decorating. We are completely opposite in so many ways, but I love him dearly and we are looking forward to spending the rest of our years together here on this earth. He's good to me and allows me to spread my wings and strive to be the person that I was meant to be. He encourages me, challenges me, and accepts me, with my good and bad traits and I do the same for him. Our life has not been perfect along the way, but we have each other to lean on and that is very comforting. He's a devoted Christian man and it's always his heart's desire that Biblical truth be told and I admire him for that. He will never be accused of being a wimp.

So, that's our story about me and my Valentine! Can't wait to see his face when he sees his heart-shaped cake.

Head on over to Garden Goose for a Valentine's Day giveaway. Be sure to tell her I sent you.