sshhh...it's a secret surprise Valentine

I only have a few minutes during my lunch hour to put this up. I hope this isn't the first day ever that the recipient of this Valentine will actually visit my blog...  I won't link up to FB until later, so probably no one will see this post today anyway.

So, I am married to this wonderful man - Mr. Wonderful.  In honor of Valentine's day we had a nice dinner on Saturday and went to a performance at the Berkeley Rep. I bought a big bouquet of roses for our table, and baked a cake to have tonight with the kids.  So we agreed we were done with Valentine's day save maybe a card and a little chocolate (for him). And also I bought myself a new car (!!yay), with Mr. Wonderful's blessing. So yeah, spending more money seemed silly right now.

But, I had seen some of the last minute Valentine craft roundups on blogs in the past week, and this tutorial for a "Pocket Full of Love" popped up on craftzine.com.  Actually, the tutorial itself is from Cloud Nine Fabrics (yummy organic, soft...)

So, I hurriedly went through my stash and scraps to find something to use, printed out the instructions, made up my own template because I couldn't print the template provided on 11x17 paper, and got to it!

Admittedly, the quality of this little pillow would have been a little higher if I'd given myself more time. But I had to work fast in little pieces of the day that I could steal away to my corner in the basement (pretending to do laundry).  Remember, I was also making last-minute Valentine's with Wild Thing.

(our house is a mess.)

I took two seconds to admire it before I hid it away in my closet.  You can't find anything in there unless you know my system. hehe.

This morning, I filled it with messages of love and with chocolate!  I left propped up on Mr. Wonderful's pillow.

Is it OCD to not let go of your idea to create something romantic for this commercial holiday, even though you haven't had time to plan a project ahead of time and even though you've agreed with your sweetheart that we've marked the occasion enough already?

Maybe so. Yes, probably. But Mr. Wonderful is such a perfect fit for me - the partner I want to grow old with (am already growing old with!). So I couldn't stop the obsessing until I compulsively acted out to make this little pocket of love.

I know he will understand.

( btw, the image on the card tucked inside the pocket is a free download from a talented artist named Samantha Hahn that I also found through craftzine.com - it's perfect for us and works better than any of the choices I looked at in the stores. I just printed it out, trimmed it down and stitched it to a blank card I had laying around...)