romantic backyard valentine's day dinner :)

i'd been dreaming & scheming up this dinner scene all last week.  we didn't have any real valentine's day plans or things we wanted to do, so i thought we could do something fun at home.  thankfully the seattle weather cooperated with us and we were able to execute our lady & the tramp inspired italian dinner out in our backyard.  i recently watched the video of the

dinner scene

from that movie; it was so cute and made me so happy...i forgot how sweet that movie is since it was never one of my top disney favs.  

peter got me these beautiful orange/red/yellow tulips the day before valentine's day.  they are so bright and lovely! for our dinner, i made homemade meatballs, spaghetti, and some garlic toasts with havarti cheese.  shout out to our friend jenny's family winery,

yamhill valley vineyards

, for supplying our choice vino for the occasion.  we have been saving the bottles we bought during our visit there last summer.  i'm glad we busted out the 2009 pinot noir reserve for our special dinner date (2009 was a "good year" in oregon wine country...i think...right jenny? does anybody read this? anyway, the wine was delicious in my book). 

here are some photos of our dinner scene.  i am so glad we were able to reuse the wooden heart light we made for peter's cousin's wedding last year!

rosemary [from our yard!] for blood orange & rosemary water.  very light and refreshing!

in my original lady & the tramp scheme, i wanted a red and white checkered table cloth, but didn't find one in time.  i like how the stripes looked, though!

my sweet pete hung up the heart light for me

and he made a fire in the fire pit!  it was feeling aaalmost summer-y out there.

i bought pete the delicious grapefruit ipa by ballast point brewing.  it is ultra delightful.

meatball makings.  i omitted photos of the meat, because raw meat photos would be gross in a line-up of photos with flowers and candles and general cutesy-ness.

i wanted to show this little cast iron dutch oven that my grandma recently mailed to me. she told me it was actually her mother's! we couldn't figure out how old it probably is, but i am glad that i have it now :)

our wee little backyard area

dinner is served.  

the only thing we were missing was some olde italian jamz.  nope, we did not recreate the spaghetti kiss. you're welcome.

my fancy backwards-capped, flannel wearing valentine. i love him.  [he's wearing my uncle's old hat with horses on it that says, "designated driver." haha]

happy valentine's day!

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qp

new tape deck.

yes. that's correct. we got ourselves a brand new tape deck. because we were made in the 80's babies.

it's for the volkswagen, folks.

pete & i are going on a week long road trip from seattle to san francisco this may. we plan to take highway 101 all the way down, stopping at breweries along the way, and camping in our surprisingly comfortable volkswagen camper bus.  our "destination" is the berkeley area to visit our friends marisa & foster who recently moved down there.  pete is a firm believer in the notion that "the journey is the destination," hence the old tymey tape deck, our weird and eclectic collection of cassette tapes, and the fact that we are pumped to do this sunny volkswagen road trip some justice and listen to cassette tapes on the open road for six days.

pete whipped up this little console this weekend! he tore out the original one that was starting to sound all LoOoOoOoOoPy when we'd listen to certain tapes.  it was actually pretty funny to hear, but maybe it'd be nice to hear what the actual song sounds like...

too legit to quit. even my celine tape.

it is february and we are making preparations for may. we are clearly excited to see some sunshine and go on an adventure!