Vegan Valentine's Day Menu

We typically do a no-spend February and still, Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe because we don't do the commercial thing, and instead we really focus on telling each other how much we  love one another.

I always make sure to "heart bomb" the kids' beds with reasons we love them. And every year they love hearing the things that make them so special to us (I mean, who doesn't like to hear nice things about themselves!)

Then we feed the kids an easy and early dinner and put them to bed so we can have a fancy, at home meal. Fancy attire required.

This year, Cor put together the menu.


Appetizer
For an appetizer, we had an amazing miso-marinated portobello carpaccio. If you make nothing else, make this. Just do it.

Here's the recipe.

Salad
When the kids crashed our date, all they wanted was to eat parts of this salad. Yum.

Find it here.

Main Dish
The main dish was a Butternut Squash Farinata. Neither of us knows really what that means, except that it was delicious. It reminded us of stuffing and Thanksgiving and all things warm and yummy.

You can find the recipe, here.

Dessert
This thing was fantastic. It was just perfect.

Here's the details.

Want to watch our Valentine's Day Vlog? Check it out here:

Ay's Butterfly Bowling Birthday

Hold up- Didn't I just post a Birthday Blog Post today? What am I doing here posting another one? If you didn't already know, Ay was born one day before Cam's 3rd birthday - making January a fun month of back to back birthdays. We had two birthday parties in one weekend, but it's worth it to make sure everyone has a super special day.

All Ay wanted this year was a "Butterfly Party" and that was easy enough to accomplish. She went with me to Dollar Tree and found some butterfly plates and a butterfly banner. I picked up a cheap pink tablecloth and we were basically set. I got her cute little party napkins on clearance from Target. The party wasn't happening at home, so I (gladly) minimized the crazy that I typically put into parties.

We had her party at a Duckpin Bowling Alley (if you're lucky enough to know what Duckpin is, then you can sit with us ;) If you don't know - it's mini balls and pins. Now you know, and now you can sit with us ;) ) The alley had a Sunday special and is always cool with  crews just showing up, grabbing lanes, and getting their party on. We ordered 2 pizzas and sodas from the alley and had fun watching kids almost break throw balls down the lane.

Her butterfly cupcakes came from Wal-Mart and each had a butterfly ring inside. We got some butterfly and star glow wants at Dollar Tree for the favors. And I ordered her sweet little party dress from here (affiliate).

By far, her favorite part was having everyone sing to her. She giggled when we all sang her name.
You can watch it all below.

Cam's Super Rad SIXTH Birthday

We typically go big for birthdays, but having a kid in Kindergarten put us on a whole other level! Cam decided he wanted to have a Dance Party with a real disco ball, I was happy to make a party where the main activity was just letting kids dance it out. Some affiliate links are included to help you find what we used.

We made some super cute invites from this free download and I ordered a ton of glow sticks from here. I taped a glow stick to each invite and sent them to school in an empty tissue box (I was super paranoid the kid was going to crack them all open while sitting on the bus, but they all survived.)

We ordered some way RAD friendship bracelets and some cool shades to give out as party favors. We still have a bare wall that we covered in neon steamers and filled up the living room with neon  balloons (and that disco light we gave him as his present earlier in the day.)

My FAVORITE part of the party was this polaroid picture frame I made from the Dollar Tree. It was so simple. You can check out how I made it here. After Cam opened each gift, we took a quick photo with the kid who it was from and then used them later as our Thank You cards.

I got the YAY cupcakes from Wal-Mart. Seriously. Wal-Mart. For less than $12 for 24. We also picked up some $5 pizzas and jugs of lemonade and called it done. I think I picked up a box of rainbow goldfish crackers that never even got opened... But food was not the priority of this party. The priority was dancing!

Cam helped make a playlist and we hooked it up to Alexa (I'm convinced he really just wanted an Alexa party, but having her play music was a big hit.)

So, what's on a 6 Year Old's Playlist? Here's what we had for a good 30 mins of music:

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This was one of the most stressful parties to think about planning (um, hello, we had parents drop off and pick up a bunch of kindergartners! eek!), but it turned out so cute and was such a blast. Watch all the fun below: