a labor of love

the timing of life worked out so that the first valentine’s day that the boy and i celebrated together was my first valentine’s day ever with a significant other. being the dramatic romantic that i am, i was a little overexcited about having a valentine! it was a weekday, and ian planned a date for that night, so i invited him over for breakfast before work. i had this brilliant plan to make heart-shaped cinnamon rolls (which, of course, i had seen on pinterest) for a cutsie and lovey valentine’s breakfast. cinnamon rolls are among the boy’s favourite treats, and we had a little inside joke about them, so i thought this would be perfect (especially with the heart-shaped twist)!

i foolishly chose a recipe that called for the dough to rise twice, and so i woke up two different times in the wee hours of the morning to prepare our epic love-day breakfast. feeling pretty drowsy, i tried to follow the directions exactly and then unroll and re-roll the dough into heart shapes. kind of long story short – yeast had a mind of its own that morning and the cinnamon rolls (which took longer than estimated to prepare and then burned, by the way…) really didn’t look cute. i ended up asking the boy to come thirty minutes later than planned and the spread wasn’t quite what i’d envisioned. but buttercream frosting, heart-cut strawberries and a good dose of falling in love saved the day!

since that 14 february, we’ve joked with each other about my “labor of love” that sure didn’t turn out perfectly but was wonderful nonetheless. and thus began a charian valentine’s day tradition of cinnamon rolls for breakfast! last year i used my sister’s only-have-to-let-it-rise-once recipe and decided to forgo the heart-shaped element because i was too scared of bizarre cinnamon roll blobs. this year, we had to have our cinnamon rolls a few weeks late since we were out of town on valentine’s day and then consumed with some other things until march. but last saturday, the “labor of love” returned, and by then i had built up enough courage to try to heart shapes again on a few rolls.

they were still a little wonky, but not too shabby!

 
^^ the boy fresh out of bed on a saturday morning. i love that i’m crazy about him like this and in his well-tailored suit everyday for work. i just think he’s the cutest. ^^

and they were thoroughly enjoyed, that’s for sure. since i didn’t think to half (probably should have figured out a way to quarter!) the recipe, we had about twenty cinnamon rolls left over after breakfast. we thought about taking them to our neighbors or friends, and then ended up eating all of them over the course of the next three days. that kind of makes me sick to think about, but it also made us both kind of really happy :)



i’m all for extending holiday celebrations into the next month! especially when we are celebrating something as outlandishly wonderful as true love. we had a friend over for dinner on sunday evening and the boy and i ended up recounting our love story as part of an awesome conversation the three of us got into. i adore looking back on all the miracles of our wild ride, and i am so so so so so so so so glad we chose each other.

here’s to labors of love!