1st Annual Chili Cook-Off and a Valentine

It's too cute not to share with everyone. Here is the Valentine our younger son made for his Dad & I this year. No help from anyone, he came up with this idea on his own. He made the arrow out of a dowel left over from an old science project, designed and cut out the heart and then wrote the inscription. It is just too cute. I wish I was half as creative as my 10 year old!

Then...
Some roses my husband brought home to me last week. Sorry for the dropped petal... they are starting to get a tiny bit tired.

So.. this is one of those posts where I should let the pictures do the talking and not use my words much. Problem is...there are no pictures of what I want to talk about. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Here I am, two days after one of the most fun parties I've had the opportunity to plan and pull off and I am picture-less. Of the party...

Flowers on the other hand, flowers I can picture. The bouquet above was brought my one of our entrants. I had a "Creative Presentation" category and that's what she entered. The flowers doubled as a hostess gift for me. YAY for me!!! :)

We hosted the first of what we hope becomes a very long standing tradition of Chili Cook-Off's to be held the third Sunday of every February. There were 37 people in my house at one point on Sunday - almost all of them eating one chili or another. It was amazing. We had 10 people bring chili and there were supposed to be a few more but... life happens. One family had two children with the flu and another friend had broken her back... With reasons like that I could do nothing more than totally understand, miss them like crazy and tell them to make sure they put it on their calendar for next year!

If there was anyone who didn't have fun, well... he was a bit of a cranky-pants that day anyway so his opinion can't count. At least thirty-six people had an "awesome" time and already it have it on their calendars for next year.

So... there are the flowers I used to decorate for the cook-off. Spread around the house a bit they are a touch of spring joy in the midst of winter. Not that we're having much of a winter. We were up around 60 degrees yesterday and I think we'll be close to the same today. Only the night reminds us it's not spring, dropping down into the 30's to remind us it's still February.

The flowers do help mitigate that a bit, though. It's as if Spring entered through my front door and spread itself around my house. Can't help but smile about that!