Pasta Weezie!

Now I know many people don't celebrate Valentine's Day because it is a "hallmark" holiday.  I have a few thoughts on this whole issue.  First, regardless of it being a "hallmark" holiday or not, there REALLY is a St. Valentine; second - is it really so terrible to set a day aside to spend with the ones you love?  I realize that we all should tell and show the ones in our lives that we love, we love them everyday, but let's be real people - we all have bad days and don't necessarily put forth our best effort to support and be kind to those that are important to us.  SUCK IT UP and take a minute, five or heck, twenty-four hours to do something nice for those you really value in your life.  GET OVER THE HARD ASS STIGMA - "happy singles awareness day" or whatever you call it - so you don't currently have a significant other; I bet if you take 3.5 seconds to think about it you have MANY SIGNIFICANT people in your life that would appreciate a "thank you, "I love you", "you make my days better"...I am so tired of people letting society and others dictate their emotions.  You feel and act how you CHOOSE to feel and act so if you are going to be a "negative Nancy" perhaps that is why you are lacking a signifcant other.  If you are not one of the aforementioned, then perhaps, you truly value your morals and are not willing to lower your standards and expectations to simply have a companion - if you are this person, I appreciate you!  You should thus spend Valentine's Day loving yourself =)  You are strong, independent and unwilling to accept less than what you deserve and you know the value of your own love! 

Steve and I decided we would have a "low key" Valentines Day...not spend a lot of money and do something at home for dinner.  SO, we decided to FINALLY use the authentic Italian pasta maker my Dad got me for my birthday (June) and make some homemade pasta sauce while we were at it.  It turned out pretty tasty if I do say so and it was fun to make a meal at home with him.  That is one of the things I really enjoy doing with Steve when we are both home - make homemade meals together!  We have braved pizza from scratch, halloween sugar cookies from scratch (icing and all) and now pasta!  Every time we always end up spending way more than a few hours doing what we thought would be only an hour prep for a meal - lol...we should really know better by now!  In any case, here are a few pictures from our pasta tonight!  The first is with Steve using his pasta rolling skills and the thin white pieces are all the pasta pieces drying in order for use to cut them with the pasta machine into strips...the latter, of course, our tasty homemade, from scratch meal =)  Homemade pasta really does taste much better than store bought - is this because of all the hard work one puts in to create it?  Who knows, all I know is that I was taken back to my time in Italia this past May...sigh...one day we will return...