Valentine's Date Ideas

It is crazy to me that this will be our fourth Valentine's together. 

As you can tell, I love Valentine's Day!

I really just love any reason to celebrate something. 

I thought I would share with you what we have done to celebrate each year, 

in case you are in need of some great ideas...

1. For our first Valentine's together, we each planned our own date and we celebrate two days in a row.  I loved this because we each got to surprise the other with our date idea and we got to extend the holiday. Dave came down to Provo and took me out to a nice restaurant and then we went wedding RING SHOPPING! It was the best surprise ever. We definitely went ring shopping many times after that and we didn't get engaged until the end of July but our very first time was on Valentine's and I loved every minute of it. The date I planned was for Sunday night. I made a delicious homemade meal and homemade sugar cookies. I love decorating sugar cookies so I made some delicious homemade lime frosting and Dave hated it... fail. Don't get me wrong, he was still very nice about it but he didn't like it at all! haha. Valentine's doesn't have to be perfect.

 2. Our second Valentine's together was our first 'Married valentine's'. I made Dave plan this one because I love seeing what he comes up with. He took me to a fun little Mexican restaurant close to our house that we had been wanting to try. He bought me some adorable red toms which I had been really wanting and he got me carnations.... This is where the fail came in. For some reason I really don't love carnations and I totally cried! Hilarious I know. I guess I really just expected him to get me roses, but he didn't. And I was really emotional for some reason?? Who knows... Anyways, he did buy me these beautiful roses a few weeks later.  Once again, Valentine's doesn't have to be perfect.

3. Last year for Valentine's, instead of getting gifts for each other we decided to go get a couple's massage. My heavens, it was AMAZING! We went to Massage Envy and they have some re-occuring deal where you can get an hour long couples massage for about $100, I think. Neither of us had ever had a body massage before so we loved it. Then we had a delicious homemade meal of BBQ salmon and key lime pie-- he even liked the lime too. The even better part... we didn't have a fail last year :)

As for this year... we haven't really decided what we are going to do yet. We love movies and I read the  Nicholas Sparks book 'Safe Haven' so we might go see that since it comes out on Valentine's Day. And maybe a delicious dinner somewhere in town too. We are still thinking of ideas. Does anyone have any good date ideas for me???

Our Love Story.

First and foremost.
The winners of the FIRMOO giveaway...
First place: Amanda
Second place: Krista, Veronica, Sierra, Ashely, Ja Nae
Look for an email from me soon, lovely ladies!

This week is going to be all about LOVE.
So if you don't enjoy cheesy love quotes and stories and ideas.
Then stop now. . .

I shared a little bit about our love story over at the 14 days of love last week.
I love it so much that I want to share it with you too.

Love is one of my favorite things. 

I love reading about love. 

I love listening to music about love. 

I love watching people fall in love. 

But most of all, I love our LOVE story. 

Be excited, because I am going to give you a short little synopsis of how it all played out...

The beginning of July 2009, I had just said goodbye for two longs years to a boy I had been dating. I was determined to wait until he got home to see if things would work out between us... little did I know, three days later I would meet my future husband. We met at a Pina Colada party, awesome I know. He was a very attractive blonde boy, a rock climber, recently returned missionary and he made me laugh. I saw him every night for the next four days and he finally got my number and asked me out for a date the following Monday. We went rock climbing...

We texted each other every day and hung out almost every night for the rest of that Summer. I was the first to kiss him at the end of July, again awesome I know. I thought he was a fabulous guy, he kept taking me out to dinner (which for a poor college student was awesome!) but I was nineteen years old and totally not ready to put someone before me... I was selfish and wanted to enjoy my college single life.  And I was headed back to Provo for school. I tried to tell him I wouldn't see him as much and things probably were not going to work out. He was VERY persistent and came to Provo every weekend except for the weekends I came home. 

My young mind was definitely fooled at this point. I liked this boy but I certainly thought it was just for fun and I knew I wanted to see that one other boy when he was going to be home in two years. Then things started getting more serious. By December, I felt like I was in love with him. He was truly everything I wanted in my future husband and he treated me like gold. We starting talking about getting married around February of 2010. There were a lot of major family events that year for my family so we decided the end of the year would be best. On July 30th, he popped the big question... while we were rock climbing. 

We were married on December 27th, 2010.  It was the best day of our lives. 

Now let's rewind. 

One of my ABSOLUTE favorite things about love stories is that everybody's is different. 

And no two love stories will ever be the same. 

Our love story is filled with a lot of rock climbing, laughter, tears, date nights, tickle fights, burned dinners, vacations, cuddling, dirty dishes, moves across country, arguments, bike rides, even more rock climbing, and so much more. 

As you can see, our love story is not perfect. 

And I am so incredibly grateful for that. 

Happy 14 days of Love.

I hope you will stop by and visit.