Celebrating the special days

We never need to be persuaded to celebrate special days at our house. Our mantle always has a display of beautiful greeting cards, OpenTable emails us regularly warning us that if we don't make a reservation immediately, we'll be out of luck, and we often have a lovely show of flowers on our kitchen table.

Valentine's Day is no exception.

(From 2013.)

I don't have a photo of us from today but here's one from last Valentine's Day. I was wearing a different top today but the very same jewellery. How often can you wear your pretty heart-shaped jewellery?

(From 2015.)

William took the photo. We were obviously heading out for dinner. I remember that we had tried very early on to get a reservation at Da Maurizio, one of my favourites, but they had been fully booked by mid-January and we're not that organized. We went to a restaurant called Fiasco which was lovely and where we'd been many times — and, sadly, it no longer exists. Its chef has moved to a newly-opened restaurant so that's something to look forward to.

We had, in fact, gone to Da Maurizio the year before, 2014. The photos weren't very good — it was romantically (dimly)-lit and Dan was using his phone — but you may infer from my expression in this one that the dessert took me by surprise.

This year, when I came downstairs, there was a bouquet of truly magnificent red roses — as only red roses can be, when they're good ones. I was delighted because they were from my son who had worked the overnight shift and brought them home with him at 7:00 a.m.

From my husband, lovely little earrings from the artist Michael Vincent Michaud who works in glass.

My new earrings are made of flowers like these but mine are put together in a cluster, not a dangling line. They're very sweet.

(My contribution, every year, is a handmade card. I take pride in my card which I usually make in the middle of the night, after everyone else is in bed. I save pretty things during the year; this year, from somewhere, I had a lovely piece of golden heavy paper — almost a light box-board. I also cut pictures out of magazines, trim pictures of flowers off little address labels, and usually manage to use a lacy paper doily. I sometimes get carried away.)

In the afternoon, we went to see Daniel MacIvor's acclaimed play, Marion Bridge. The Chronicle-Herald said of it:

“The production is honest in every sense, the comedy never forced, the frequent bickering and reconciliation natural, and the torment never deliberately melodramatic... don’t miss this delightful slice of Cape Breton Life.”

That seems accurate to me.

Because we went to the matinee and got out at 4:00 p.m., we had decided to have dinner at home. As usual (because we're secret Spaniards, apparently), we sat down to eat around 9:30 p.m. We had gorgeous steaks (medium rare) with potato salad and creamy cole slaw. I made biscuits and served them with small bowls of molasses, just the way Chef Craig Flinn does at Chives. William was with us for dinner and then left to see his girlfriend.

It's very cold out and the cats both snuggled here by the fire, near where Dan is working on a jigsaw puzzle and I'm at my computer.

So that was today. I hope you've had a good day too.