Valentine's Day - A Story of High Expectations

I want to be a Fun Mom.  I want my son to look back on his life and remember fondly the traditions our family had when he was a child.  Valentine's Day was no exception.  I had planned and planned, I had ideas (Thank you Pinterest) and expectations.  From gifts to special food, to treats - I had it all planned.

Let me stop here to explain something for those of you who may not know me well - I am a planner. (you know, if you couldn't tell by my statement above) I have grand ideas, and I am hard on myself (and those around me) if my plans don't work. I would be crushed if my plans failed, or didn't work out.  Or at least I used to be.

Now back to my Valentine's Day Plan.  I thought I had it all worked out, I picked easy things to do and used decorations I had already for our special family day.  How can that fail, right?

My first idea was to use store bought refrigerated  cinnamon rolls, unroll them and reroll them into heart shapes.  Cute idea right?  Yep - cute idea.  So simple - yet super cute!  I set my alarm early, got up in plenty of time to make them before Steve went off to work.  I opened the can, ready to create my first of many special surprises for this day.  Looking at the rolls I realized that the brand I bought  are not rolled up dough, they were biscuit shaped with scored tops and cinnamon.  Yep - failed heart shaped cinnamon rolls.  (they were still delicious!)  I rallied and thought - "Oh Well - still many surprises to come for our day"

My next idea was to make a heart shaped cake, and that I did - the cake itself came out beautifully.  (Just a note, the chocolate cake recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa Powder box is easy and fantastic!)  I had a heart shaped cake just ready for my homemade Buttercream Frosting.  I mean really, how hard is homemade Buttercream?  Apparently harder than I thought.  I am not sure what happened, but all I had was runny, way-to-sweet hot mess.  So what did I do?  I still frosted my delicious cake. I thought to myself  "Oh Well - at least my cake still looks pretty"

My final idea was making a heart - shaped pizza for dinner; again, how hard is that?  Long story made short - I grabbed french bread dough instead of pizza dough at the store.  And it just wasn't working to make it into a beautiful heart shape.  Instead we had Stromboli.   I thought to myself  "Oh Well - at least it was still delicious"

My day didn't turn out as I had hope it would.  It was even better.  My little family and I had a fantastic day, filled with love and memories. We laughed a lot, opened presents  perfectly picked for each of us and ate yummy round shaped cinnamon rolls, a pretty cake (that ended up in the trash) and what was arguably the best Stromboli I ever made.

I learned that sometimes just being together is better than anything I could ever plan.

(On a side note, if anyone had a good recipe for Buttercream frosting - feel free to send it along)