Valentines Treats

To make up for hogging the brownies I made for the class (sorry guys!) I thought I'd bring them some treats for Valentines.

The brownie recipe I used can be found here I don't really follow the specific chocolate instructions, I use semi-sweet chocolate chips for both the brownies and the ganache and they turn out lovely. I didn't do ganache for the brownies for my class because they'd be harder to pile in a container, so instead I added pink and red smarties.

PS: I'm a messy baker, and the batter is amazingggg. 

Making the ganache for the batch I made for Peter

Yumm. 

Discovered little spots

It's so nice to be home after a busy few days up North. Wednesday night we celebrated my return by going out for a nice dinner in our area of the city to Ember Hot Stove & Social House. It's been open for just over a week now and we kept walking by looking at the pretty decor getting excited for a new place to go.

Ember sour martini. 

We were super pleased with our experience, amazing food, great service and warm atmosphere. Restaurants in this area seem to open and close rather quickly, we're definitely hoping this one sticks around. Though it's a bit pricey for our student budget to go frequently we're planning on talking it up lots.

Lobster mac & cheese.

What a week!

Oh geez, this weekend was needed, and thank goodness for reading week! Lots of nights up doing coursework past 3 AM, pacing and thinking up taglines, designing Facebook pages. However in the program I'm in it would be insane to try and go away on reading week like normal students. There is just so much work to do to try and get our portfolios up to a standard where they're worth showing off. But because I'm a rebel like that we came back to North Bay for a bit before I visit my parents. Then I will go back to the city, plop myself at my desk and write for 4 straight days. Kinda. While this week was insanely stressful there were some upsides.

My books came in! A cute little agenda to help me stay organized, some copywriter essential reads and Kate Spade, just because. 

I found some great inspiration for this on Pinterest. Making a daily checklist that suits your life.

Mine includes what to read, to blog, to cook, clean, and check online. I'm going to print 40 or so at Staples and see if they work for me.

We picked up this little humidifier from the Umbra store last weekend. It's hard to see but water vapour puffs out the chimney. We didn't have a water bottle handy so we just used a ginger ale bottle but it still puffs away. We've named it lil' putt-putt. 

I'm trying to learn how to play Magic cards. I can't wrap my head around all the rules. And I get distracted by the illustrations. Does anyone have any tips for how to make learning easier?

Hope you all had a lovely Valentines! I'll post about our little love notes tomorrow. 

Our kinda frugal Valentines

I have always loved Valentines day. My mum and I would bake cupcakes and treats every year to bring to my class and decorate them with pretty pink frosting. I'd get to pick out my cards to give out to the class sometimes Strawberry Shortcake, then Disney princesses, Muppets, then Harry Potter the next 6 years. 

I've always gone a little overboard since I started dating Peter. My love of romantic gifts, shopping and working in a lingerie store were a match made in sparkly, chocolate coated, rose petal strewn heaven. Last year we celebrated in Cuba so that's kind of hard to top.

After some thought we decided we were going to not exchange gifts this year. Instead we created our little love notes. We started on the February 1st, the rule is you have to put at least one note in a day leading up to Valentines. Our notes can be silly, romantic or thankful, we just have to write something we love about each other. 

We're going back to North Bay for Valentines where we'll have dinner at our favourite pizza place and split a Greek Salad and Pesto pizza. Then we'll come home and dump out the vase and read our notes. I've put in two today already. Peter thinks we might run out of paper. What are your plans for Valentines?

Only made from things I found around the house...I used Crayola scented markers for the hearts so there's a little bit of public school nostalgia.