Valentine's Day: Gift Set-Up with V-Day Tree

I had plans of making this tree into a cool centerpiece, but we had so many other things going on that it didn't happen. Here's what I did, though. I got an old, dirty terracotta pot from my storage, cleaned it up, and painted it white. I went out in our woods behind our house and cut an appropriate limb off a tree. I spray painted it white then left it outside overnight to dry. The next day I brought it in the house, stuck it in florist foam in the pot, trimmed it down to the right size for our dining table, and covered the foam with Red Hots. My plan was to hang little Valentine's from it and wrap Valentine ribbon around the pot. I didn't get that part done. But it was cute, nonetheless. When I get my Easter decorations done I will show you how I turned this Valentine tree into an Easter tree.

I decided our Valentine's Day celebration would be at home. My husband is one of the few men in America who can get away with forgetting Valentine's Day, Birthdays, Anniversaries, etc., because he has TBI. I know not to expect anything. He usually does an excellent job of pulling through, but to avoid the heartache in case he struggles I go ahead and plan things for us. So my plan was to cook him a nice dinner and have a romantic set-up for him. I wrapped small gifts for him (the ones that I ended up having to leave town and didn't get to do by the day earlier in the month + the new hand planer for day 14), and I placed them around the Valentine's tree. I ran to the store to pick up a few dinner items I had forgotten, and when I got home he had added three more gifts to the table. Woohoo!!!! So... we had appetizers of cheese, olives, wine, and beer... our favorite casual appetizers. This was my set-up:

For dinner I fixed a Blue Cheese Wedge Salad, Steak, and Smashed and Baked Potatoes. All ingredients except the blue cheese and dressing were organic, and the steaks came from a local farmer who grass feeds and finishes his cattle. Even the seasoning I used for the steak was from a local farmer made of all organic ingredients.

I splurged on the dessert by baking a southern classic.... Coca-Cola Cake. I failed to get pics of it, but it was out of this world. My hubby LOVED it... to put it lightly.

Check out the recipes to this dinner on other pages of this blog!