Valentine's Day has never really been much of a thing in my house. Our wedding anniversary is right after the first of the year. Between the holidays and our anniversary, it just always feels like too much to "celebrate" something else. As I have mentioned before, Kelly is a pretty simple girl and I have always appreciated that. Besides, I try to buy flowers more than once per year!
But, I have always loved a "fancy" dinner. With kids at home we don't dress up and get out very often. But, I have been known to make an occasional candlelight dinner at home for all three of my girls. Like me, Abby loves a "fancy" dinner.
Abby asked me if I was planning anything special for mom for Valentine's Day. Before you get too impressed, I believe it was the morning of when she asked me if I had a plan. I told her that I was planning on making Pasta Diablo, one of Kelly's favorite dishes from an area restaurant.
After a little bit of pondering Abby said, "You guys should do a date night without us. Well......you can't really go anywhere, but maybe I could set up a table for you in the basement and you could eat down there." I thought that was a great idea! She asked for some creative license to do as she wished and I gave her the go ahead. Once she was all set up she asked me to come and check it out and I was impressed!
She decided to repurpose her desk she uses for school as our table. She found a red table cloth somewhere, place mats, wine glasses (for the people that don't drink wine) and even some battery operated candles that we had sitting around. It was really a very nice job.
In true Ballard fashion, it was a hodge podge of things that we made work and it actually turned out pretty nice. In the picture on the right, you might notice that 2 of the 3 candles aren't "lit". They had dead batteries. Kelly is in her workout clothes that she wore all day and I was in my same pajamas that I wore to church on the couch in the morning. We were surrounded by some of the clutter that is our basement. Our wine glasses were filled with water from a pitcher that wasn't quite put together correctly.
But, more than all of that, we were able to devote 30+ minutes of time with each other just enjoying a meal. Nothing else mattered and the company was great. No 5 star restaurant, but it was enjoyable just the same.
We don't really need a holiday to celebrate each other. We try to do that many times throughout the year. If it wasn't so cold, I might even try to go buy some clearance flowers now. Maybe in a couple of days instead.
Interested in the recipe that I made? Check it out here.
No comments:
Post a Comment