Valentine's Day Gifts

Good news ladies! Contrary to popular belief, I have proof that men are both able to listen and change. I mentioned yesterday that I came home from America to find flowers and 3 Valentine’s gifts from my hubby.

I was surprised to open them and find that he had finally taken my advice and gotten me something practical. Three somethings practical to be exact. The first was a magnet listing various conversions from UK measurements to the correct American ones.

Now I don’t have to cook with one hand, while constantly using my other hand to use my iphone converter app.

Also helping in the conversion department is this fancy digital food scale.

A lot of UK recipes will give measurements in weight and I am just plain clueless as to how many chicken breasts equals 1 pound or how many sticks of butter equals 500 grams. Problem solved.

The third gift was a super fancy blender/food processor combo.

I have never owned a food processor but have wanted one for forever. There are so many recipes that call for this cooking tool that I have had to just skip over. Not anymore. Chicken salad, here I come!

And the blender came just in time for some serious smoothie cravings that have been haunting my tummy. (Our American blender burned up the first time I tried to use it through our converter). I go through random smoothie phases in my life where it is all I want to eat. Well, one just started yesterday so I am off to the store this afternoon to buy all my smoothie-making supplies. Yay!

Didn’t my honey do a great job with Valentine’s day this year? I would so rather these kitchen essentials than another piece of jewelry or another bottle of perfume. I’m so glad he finally believed me and now he’ll get to benefit from my improved cooking skills. Win-win.  

Now I also got Jonathan a pretty cool gift. For a while now he’s wanted a large travel map where we can pin all the places we’ve been. I thought Valentine’s day was the perfect time to grant this wish. What a romantic way to celebrate our travels together! If you couldn't tell I was pretty stinkin' proud of myself for thinking of it. Unfortunately, I could only find one like I wanted in the States and therefore ordered one and sent it to my folks. 

I thought it would be a poster that I could roll up but instead it's made of sturdy corkboard, which given the whole pinning purpose of the map, makes a bunch of sense. When I went to pack it up, it wasn’t even close to fitting in my suitcase.

For now it’s hanging in our room at my parents’ house in Covington until we can figure out a way to get it home. So that was my Valentine’s gift FAIL number 1...

 

Once I figured out that the perfect gift wasn’t going to make it home with me, I had to scramble to find something else. Jonathan loves the brand Vineyard Vines and he has this sweatshirt from them that he wears all the time.

It’s getting a bit raggedy and I knew he’d like a new one. I picked one up while in the States and wrapped it up to give to him. When he opened it he said he’d love it if it didn’t have a big stain on it. Apparently, some of the food items I had also packed in the suitcase spilled on it and now it was a few stains on the collar and chest that I can’t get to come out.

Any tips on what to do about that? Still not sure what the cause of the stain is but it looks like either coffee(?) or a sauce. I’d love to get it out so that my Valentine’s gifts to him are not complete failures, especially since he did such a great job with my gifts this year.

 

Maybe for our 5th anniversary in May, Jonathan can load me up with laundry supplies…