Now every February, You'll be my Valentine

Looking back on last weekend, we actually started celebrating Valentine’s day Friday.  Although I agree V-Day is overrated, an excuse for the restaurant industry to pre-fix bad menus and inflate prices 200% and all in all fairly cheesy – I am a sucker for red, pink, hearts and glitter.  Imagine how excited I was to attend a girl’s night last Friday where we were asked to bring a shoe box for a little Valentine craft, right up my alley!  Even though I pitch most of my show boxes and place my shoes in plastic containers, I have a few lying around and was so excited when I found a turquoise one.  The girl’s night was super fun, I met some really cool gals, drank lots of great wine and even got to decorate a special valentine reciprocal….haven’t done that in years.  It turned out so cute, I kept it on our living room table and we put our v-day cards in it this morning!

Saturday we met our friends Tara and Justin in Pleasanton for dinner.  We chose the Oasis Wine Bar and Lounge in Downtown Pleasanton.  Super cute place, great Kabobs, hummus and mojitos!  Would totally go there again and can’t wait to sit outside in the summer.  We probably could have sit outside Saturday night earlier, it was absolutely gorgeous all day long in the mid 70’s.  We were wearing shorts/t-shirts and were outside all day long exploring different parks and running random errands.  It would have been the perfect day to hike Mt. Diablo, maybe we’ll do that next weekend, assuming the so called rain in the forecast is a lie.

I was happy we had a chance to go out last weekend as v-day is on a Monday this year, perfect excuse to stay in.  We have dabbed in our fair share of valentine dinners out and like I said before, 9/10 times it’s a pre-fixed menu that’s never as good as the food would typically be and way more expensive.  It was nice to stay in this year, open a bottle of wine from Sonoma and let Richard cook for me!  He went to Whole Foods earlier in the day and chose the Sweetheart rib-eye.  I guess it’s called Sweetheart because it’s cut a little more thin than usual, I also heard it takes on the shape of a heart…not sure that’s true or not.  He sure did an amazing job, I don’t have the recipe to the sauce he made but it consisted of red wine, capers, mustard and scallions – I think a few other things…not sure.  He also sautéed broccolini and made red mashed potatoes.  The sauce paired amazing with everything, I really am such a lucky girl!