a valentine's day to remember

last year on valentine's day, we had a delicious dinner lit by candles, followed by a long and winding conversation touching on everything from 90s pop music to tractors with broken accelerators reversing in a field. and we called it all a lonely hearts party.

this year, we wanted to have a legitimate party to celebrate love and momentarily forget that we haven't yet found our true ones yet. and goodness, did the ideas flow.

we had a photo booth, with mustaches and lips.

we had love foods: candy, chocolate, cookies, cupcakes, and...pretzels. and more candlelight (not for consumption)

we had hundreds of (black) paper hearts hanging from the ceiling, floating above our kissletoe.

we had slow dancing on the hour, featuring a playlist of some of the best love songs ever:

9:00 "god must have spent a little more time on you"--nsync
10:00 "if you're not the one"--daniel bedingfield (still takes me back to stake dances)
11:00 "everything i do (i do it for you)"--bryan adams
12:00 "all my life"--k-ci and jojo (admittedly, we didn't get to the last two because of tiredness. but they are epic songs nonetheless)

and we had a mailbox making station, so everyone could distribute their valentines.

and it was delightful. the valentines i gave out were these:

(apparently you can buy them on ebay...)

aren't they sweet? magic eye, and they came with an awesome poster!

and let's not forget that the night started off with another delicious candlelit dinner of heart-shaped grilled cheese and homemade tomato soup.

the night was lovely and reminded me how many amazing people are in my life. it made me want to tell the people i love that i love and appreciate them way more often than that one day a year. happy love!