This Valentine’s Day was a little different than past
years…Kris and I spent Valentine’s Day apart. Not by choice of course. As most
of you know, Kris is in the DPT program at Mizzou and right now he is doing his
second clinical in Lexington, MO. Lexington is about an hour and half from us.
Luckily, he’s close enough where he can come home on the weekends but he’s gone
pretty much the whole week. With that being said, we didn’t get to celebrate
Valentine’s Day together. We did get to see each other the day before for a
short bit and were still able to surprise each other this past Valentine’s week
with some touching gestures.
Kris stayed up Wednesday evening after I went to bed and surprised
me Thursday morning with a trip down memory lane. Even though Kris had already
left for his clinical very early that morning, he still managed to make my
v-day special. When I woke up, I was greeted by a few Post-its on the bedroom
door guiding me to my next location. Each location was a photo displayed
somewhere in our house and a Post-it on it with an explanation on why that
photo was special or how he felt about me when that photo was taken. Here are just a few...
from the first photo of coutney and i... |
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to a photo of our first trip to gatlinburg...
to a photo of one of our engagement photos in Chicago…
to the last location where there was the final 3 Post-its on our bathroom mirror…
Kris had managed to take me on a journey of our relationship
through our house. It was so sweet and I feel so fortunate that after
almost 7 years of being together that we still put so much effort into our
relationship.
Now onto my gift for Kris…it actually worked out well that
Kris and I weren’t together on Valentine’s Day because it gave me the
opportunity to execute my plan. My idea stemmed from that the thought that while
Kris has quite a few friends that he loves and love him, he hasn’t had many
opportunities over the years to get great photos with these people. Many of
these special peeps live all over the country, and getting married allowed for
the opportunity to get some pretty spectacular photos with them. Plus, we had
an amazing photographer, Cassandra
Eldridge, who made that happen! All that being said, my vision was to
create a “Kris’ Wall of Fame” of sorts in his office where it would be a wall
of all things that Kris loves – family, friends, St. Louis and of course me!! I
decided to go with a black & white theme that included all black &
white photos and black frames with white mats. I was also going to ask the very
talented cartographer, Daniel Morey to create an STL map for Kris but didn’t
have enough time to ask by the time I thought of the map idea. I ended up
adding this sweet vintage, black & white STL map that I found compliments
of recyclebyjmgdesign.blogspot.com.
Lastly, I created a framed page that included a wedding photo surrounded by our
wedding song lyrics. Amazed that I was able to track down a hammer and nails, I
went to town. Here is the final product…
The unveiling was on Friday night when Kris got home and he
loved it! He wasn’t even upset that I took down his Cardinal Pennants!!!
However, I’m pretty certain that they will find a new home on one of his other
walls.
Overall it was a really nice valentine’s day! I almost
forgot to tell you about a very simple, not necessarily healthy, cookie recipe
I tried out! They probably won’t break the bank if you have one or two. By my
calculations each cookie was about 90 calories. I made these for Kris on
Wednesday and then brought the rest to work. No leftovers which makes me happy.
I don’t like having temptation around!
No Flour PB Cookies (Gluten Free)
Ingredients: 1 cup
peanut butter (I used natural PB), 1 cup sugar, 1 egg
Preheat oven to 375. Mix the
ingredients together and roll dough into one inch balls. Put a few inches apart
on a cookie sheet and bake for approximately 9 minutes. My recipe made about 28
cookies – this number will depend on how big you want your cookies to be. Happy
eating!
