I love Valentine's day. Aside from Christmas, It is my favorite holiday. Yes I'm a hopeless romantic. Throughout my school years I always hoped that someone would ask me to be their valentine. I would write valentines for my classmates. I would try to think of the perfect thing to say to________ and picture him saying, "Shelley, what you wrote in that valentine was so funny! We should hang out out more. " And then we'd go for a walk, holding hands, and maybe wander beneath an old oak tree for a slow kiss... Until the bell rang and we had to leave the playground. Needless to say, I received no such responses.
I spent Valentine's Day single 22 times and it has always been special. First of all, my Mother's birthday is on Valentine's Day. So perfectly named Valerie or Val, she has often said she was my Grandmother's Valentine. So no matter what my age or relationship status I have always been able to celebrate both, with heart shaped cakes, cards, little cinnamon hearts and paper crafts, and have gotten mushy cards from my parents! My first Valentine's Day away from home was spent in Switzerland. When I was 18 I went to be an Aupair (Nanny) for a year. I then realized that Valentine's Day as we know it is pretty much only celebrated by North Americans! What?! Who will celebrate it with me? Since I couldn't ignore the holiday altogether, I set about baking some heart shaped sugar cookies, decorating them and making little valentines to put with them. "Happy Valentine's Day! (February 14th in Canada)". I had only arrived a month earlier and had few friends, so I went through the village and gave them to everyone that I had so much as started conversation with or been introduced to! It will always be a special memory watching peoples reactions to my unexpected gifts.
Another memorable day was when I was living in Canmore, Alberta. I had the blessing of living with 3 other girls in this huge amazing house which we called, "The Blue Lodge". At the time we were all without boyfriends on Feb. 14th. That day, I happened to be walking down Main St. and popped into a local coffee shop to see who was there. (Only in a small town, eh?) My roommate Amber was there having coffee with Helena! I sat down and chatted with them and minutes later our other roommate Heather came along! We all decided to go home and do something for Valentine's Day so we joined the fourth Musketeer, Cassie, at the Blue Lodge and decorated cookies, ever so daintily. It was perfect, with loads of pink icing, giggling, and enjoying each others friendship. I do believe that some of those cookies had initials on them. They may have even been given to somebody... I never did find out the whole story.
Strange enough; Danny and I still haven't spent Feb. 14th together. Last year he was on a wilderness survival course, outside at -38C. Heather and I had both moved to Ontario to be with our men and I visited her for Valentine's day. Both of us being artists, we carried on a Blue Lodge tradition of making Valentines. We laughed so hard at all the ideas we came up with. Some cheesey, some tongue-in-cheek, some oh-so-perfect. I'll be sure to send one her way this year.
I'm looking forward to all the special days that are extra special with Danny. He's wonderful. He did a pretty good job on the website too, didn't he?
It's still a fair bit of a wait but I'm going to start to prepare some valentines now so that hopefully I can create some really beautiful pieces.
If you have any special stories about Valentine's day, you can email me. I'd love to hear them.
No comments:
Post a Comment