Valentine's & Tay's Birthday!

Hello! 

I've been slacking at the blog. Things have been nuts around here. But first, let's talk about this first photo... My phone loves to randomly apply effects to the most random pictures on my phone. To be honest I have no idea how this photo even got on my phone (it's from my computer), but I thought it was perfect for writing about Valentine's! (ps you know technology is taking over the world when your phone outsmarts you). 

I hope you all had the loveliest of Valentine's Days! I have always loved Valentine's, even when I didn't have a significant other (hello super fun girls nights!), so it's extra fun now that I have a forever Valentine! 

Valentine's this year was a little different because Taylor was in Houston for a grad school interview for most of the day. However, I sent him off with some gifts, and he surprised me at work with a yummy and pretty Edible Arrangement! I'm new at my job so I was a little embarrassed but 100% excited and flattered. I picked up Tay that night happy to have him home (by the way they accepted him to the school less than an hour after his interview!).

Just SOME of the treats passed around at work that day: 

My gift sent to work from Tay!

 Tay has brought me home some goodies from each of his trips. Yessss.

Some of our gift giving. PS that huge stack of paper is the gift I talked about here . It took a LONG time but it was worth it!

And of course, Tay had a birthday! I decided to throw a little surprise get together the Sunday before his birthday since he has been traveling a lot and super stressed with school. Taylor is really hard to surprise so I was so nervous, but it turned out! We just had some different cakes and ice cream. Thanks to all who came! 

Then the celebrations continued! 

Taylor's dad bought us a Ruth's Chris gift card for Christmas so we were super excited to use it for Tay's birthday (he love steak almost as much as he loves Costco). The day before Tay's birthday we saw Enless Love then drove up to SLC for dinner! 

And then came his actual birthday! Since we'd eaten out a lot for dinner we just decided to do lunch. I have NEVER liked seafood, but since dating then marrying Tay, I've little by little started to like SOME things. I finally felt like we could get our money's worth going out for a sushi lunch (I'd learned to like enough rolls), and you guys. I LOVE sushi. YUM! 

Other than that we've just been busy working and figuring out where we're going to go to school for Taylor! Oh, and going to Costco of course! :) 

Enduring Love

Happy Tuesday! I don't know about you, but Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the week. It means we all got through Monday and NOW the week can officially start. My favorite shows are also on on Tuesdays! 

Now, as "love week" continues, I've been thinking a lot about what love is. Being a linguistics nerd, I love thinking about words, connotations, etc. The meaning of love has changed over my lifetime. I've loved seeing so many new meanings of the word in my life as I've made new friends, improved old friendships, gotten married, etc. 

Here is another tear-jerking video about "enduring love". I absolutely love this video. I think it portrays the epitome of love in the most perfect way. 

Easy, Simple Valentine's Day Gift

Happy Love Week, friends! I love Valentine's Day. I kind of always have, even when I wasn't even dating anyone. I just love all the pink and red and candy (oooh the candy) and just the celebration of love.

DEAR HUSBAND IF YOU'RE READING THIS, STOP. NOW. THANKS! :) 

February and March are busy for me as far as finding/buying/making gifts because we have Valentine's then a few days later Tay's birthday, then a month later is our anniversary. And on top of that this year (as mentioned so many times, sorry!) Tay is traveling a LOT...as in to five different schools in five different states for grad school interviews, and we have get to pay (trying to sound more optimistic!) for all the flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. So I've been having to be a little more creative and think of some less expensive gifts that will still mean a lot to Taylor.

Growing up my dad would always write little cards, notes, etc. to my mom, as well as to me and all of my siblings. Those meant more to me than any gift I received from him, especially after he passed away. So I decided I wanted to start doing more things like that for Taylor because you can keep stuff like that forever!

SO this is where I came up with this crazy idea. I decided to come up with 365 reasons I love Taylor or things I love about him. That way he'll have something to read every day until next Valentine's day. I say this idea is crazy because 365 things is a LOT of reasons to come up with on the spot, no matter how much you really do love them! But it has seriously been sooo fun to come up with so many things I love about my husband, and I think it has really helped me to focus on all of his positive attributes instead of the few small imperfections we all have and sometimes notice, right??

So I've put on here the template I'm using in case any of you need a last minute Valentine's gift for your loved one! These are 3.5"x2" (standard business card size). There are 10 little notes per 8.5x11" page (reg paper size), so if you just print 37 copies (just 37, that's all! haha) and cut them out you'll be set! I plan to have mine printed at a local copy shop and use their cutter because there's no way I'm doing this with scissors! I also plan to hole punch (I want to find a heart hole punch!) each of them and put them on a little key ring for Tay to keep. Because of that I'll probably use a light-medium weight card stock (normally I'd do heavy but I'm poor!) Feel free to do whatever you want with them! Also, if you want the heart a different color, or a different font used, I can basically use any font you find since I'm not using these commercially. Just comment below or email me with requests! I'm all for helping people give the perfect gift!

Oh, and I almost always print using .PDF files, so if you prefer that just comment or email me and I'll send it to you. Blogger doesn't let me upload .PDFs so these are .JPEG, which will work, I just love .PDF. OH and I have two different versions depending on how/what you want to write. :)

Enjoy!

And just to help us get in the mood for this fun week, watch this! I absolutely love this video because you see couples at all different stages in life and what they do to express love to each other. I watched this when Taylor and I were dating and it made me notice all the little things he did to show me he loved me. Soon after we said "I love you". Now look where we are!

Quit hatin' on the love

Hello all,

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day! So today after seeing so many anti-love/Valentine's Day posts on FB, and after being SOOOO tempted to give a rebuttal on those people's, I have decided to write more appropriately and less controversially, on my own blog, about why Valentine's Day is not "single awareness day". Yes, you may say, "well of course you think that--you're engaged." Well what I say to that is, I have been engaged for only 3 months (as of yesterday :), not my whole life, and I have never had a problem with Valentine's day. So here's what I have to say (because it's my blog, so I can):

FB Status: Happy Single Awareness Day!
Rebuttal: Valentine's Day is NOT all about couples. It's about LOVE. Last I heard, you don't have to only love your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, husband, wife, or make-out buddy. You can love your family and friends (duh). Seriously. I've had my share of lonely Valentine's Day, but I've always enjoyed the holiday. You have an excuse to eat candy, treats, make cute notes, and wear pink (if you like. it happens to be my favorite color :). Instead of thinking about how you don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, why don't you take a treat to that cute boy or girl in your ward just for fun, have a girls night, have a guys night, whatever. It's a holiday--enjoy it. I'm not trying to be insensitive, I just want to help people see another side to this. I've had so much fun on Valentine's day with my friends in past years, even when I didn't have a significant other. Try it. It's fun.

FB Status: My guess is if you have to go big on this day...you are failing 364 days of the year....
Rebuttal: There is nothing wrong with having a day set aside specifically for showing love for those whom you love. I read my school newspaper, The Daily Universe, today, and so many people talked about how you shouldn't have to only show love today. People, did anyone ever say that you can only show love on this day? I wasn't present if that did happen. People are so busy and have so much going on in life that I think it's great we have a day set aside especially for those whom we love. It's like birthdays, for example. Should we not celebrate birthdays because we should just ALWAYS be celebrating everyone's existence? No, birthdays, like Valentine's Day, are a time for us to pay special attention to that one person. Does that mean we treat them like we don't give a crap that they came into the world on all other 364 days of the year? No. So that's what I think. I see people doing nice things and showing love for friends, family, significant others, etc., all year round. Do they do as extravagant things all those times, maybe not. However, it's nice to have an excuse to do something a little extra special for those we love.

FB status: This isn't the real holiday. It's actually the eve of the holiday when all the candy is half-off.
Rebuttal: Okay, nothing is really that wrong with this. But all I have to say is, it's not ALL about the treats. Go out and love people! Haha :)

Okay, so hopefully I don't seem like too much of a hater. But I just see people, such as my mom, who don't have a significant other here to celebrate with (my dad's passed away), who still are positive on this fourteenth day of February. Those people don't mope on  Facebook about how bad today is, they just love and are grateful for those they have. They don't hate people who do happen to have a "significant" other that they choose to celebrate today with. All I've gotta say is, for the love people. For the love....go love people. Don't hate today.

And on that note I need to mention my future husband, Taylor. He's the best. He puts a smile on my face and is always trying to make me happy. Love him to death! We are getting married in 30 days :) And even if we weren't, I still wouldn't hate Valentine's Day.