Happy Hallmark Holiday!

Valentine's Day is here again. It seems to me it just might be a holiday invented by Hallmark in order to sell greeting cards and teddy bears holding ruffly hearts. Not that I would mind a greeting card, but a teddy bear, not so much. Alas, I do take the day as an excuse to do fun things like have a special dinner and make the kids something fun. Not to mention the recipe I am going to try tonight: white chocolate pudding with blackberry curd. Doesn't that sound good? Now that I have a school age kid, I am faced with the dilemma of the Valentine's Day card/treat. There must be 24 of them. Do the math, and that means my kid is going to come home from school with 24+ cheesy cards with either candy, junky toys or both attached. Which makes me want to break out in hives. Because it goes like this: 'Moooooom, can I have a treat from my treat bag???'  'Moooooooooooooom!!! It's not fair that James' got a treat bag and I didn't!!!!' 'Mooooooomm!!' And there is the inevitable 'Mom! This microscopic yoyo I got in my treat bag broke when I looked at wrong! Can you fix it?? If you can't, I just might die a slow and painful death because it is the end of the world!!' The only benefit is parental sampling that occurs after bed time hours. However, Valentine's does not yield much in the way of chocolate which is a disappointment, because candy hearts are seem to be better suited as sidewalk chalk than actual food. If you are wondering what the point is to all this rambling, it is this: I procrastinated, as if the need for Valentine's cards would go away. But it didn't. And so, as I was making dinner, I had a 'Eureka!' moment. And so during dinner I drew up a stick horse, wrote a cheesy message, and ran to Staples after dinner. Voila! Stick horse Valentine's cards. Jeff is certain that the kids are going to be angry that they only got a pencil, but James is home now and says that they liked their cards. Woo!