On to the next holiday....

I spent part of this afternoon decorating the living room and dining room for Valentine's Day. We decided to go ahead and host our usual Valentine's Day Charades Party, and I wrote out all the invitations this morning. They'll be either mailed out or handed out at the end of this week... I usually mail the invitations to friends who live in neighboring towns. Most are just given out to close-by friends and neighbors as I see them.

The biggest part of the Valentine's decorations are those huge mylar-balloons in the shape of red hearts. I buy two dozen of them and put them all around the living room, breakfast room and dining room... then give them out to couples as they leave at the end of the night, along with their party favors.

Three guessing games for this Valentine's party.... I filled up a small jar with those red-hot cinnamon candies... then I filled a glass vase with the little sugar-hearts that have Valentine words on them. I have one very tall champagne glass with a red-heart base that I will fill up with Valentine-colored M&Ms....... three separate guess-the-amount games, with three separate prizes. I counted each and every candy.... but didn't do the M&Ms yet.... being that they're chocolate, I will wait till it gets closer to the party. (Chocolate is my weakness, and I know if I open that bag now, I will have to buy another bag of M&Ms before party-night.)

I spent over an hour decorating the dining room chandelier with small red hearts.... took a while because I used very thin silver thread so the hearts look as if they're suspended.... looks very pretty and festive, but it sure took some time. I will have to drive over to Hobby Lobby and see what other decorations they have, and I also need paper and/or plastic plates and Valentine napkins for the party. We had been using real china for these parties, but it just got to wearing me out afterwards, doing two or three dishwasher-loads after the party. So now we use "real" flatware, but paper and plastic plates. Much easier. (My apologies to my Aunt Dolly, who would just cringe at the thought of paper or plastic plates.... but we just won't tell her about that.)

I found out from our friend V that our local Hallmark store is going out of business at the end of February. They've already started to mark down their merchandise, so I'll have to drive over there for a look-see. Hard to believe that they'll be closing their doors... they've been in the same location for over 25 years, and the only other Hallmark stores are in the Mall and in a shopping center across the boulevard from the Mall. So why in the world is this store closing? Unless the owner is just getting to the point where she doesn't want to have the store anymore. I really don't know, but I'm sure they'll be discussing it in the store itself and I'll find out.

So that's been the day... seems like we missed out on half of the day here... we didn't wake up till nearly ten o'clock this morning. (Going to bed after one o'clock in the morning led to such a late rising.) Last night, I let AngelBoy and ShadowBaby sleep out on the screen porch, so neither of them woke me up. Mickey Kitty was inside last night, but he doesn't wake us up in the middle of the night or early in the morning. He just sleeps till we get up. When I woke up this morning and looked at the clock (9:45) he was sleeping right next to my pillow with one of his paws wrapped up in my hair. What a sweet little cat... the youngest, the smallest, and the easiest.