Kris’ Wall of Fame

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...

 

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!

 

 

This recipe can be found at recipes.sparkpeople.com.