Valentine’s Day Recap

I  hope you all had a lovely and love-filled Valnetine’s Day yesterday! :)

After pulling an all-nighter for school, I was afraid that I would sleep through the holiday. Luckily, I did not and thank goodness because it was such a nice night.  When I got home from school, I found a ProFlowers box waiting for me on the doorstep! I opened it to find two dozen peach, orange, pink, and cream roses from my Valentine. They are so stunning! They haven’t opened up yet so I will post pictures of them in a few days once they are at their fullest. When Walker arrived home from work, we exchanged gifts (okay, that’s a lie… I gave him his gift on Wednesday after work but that would have made telling this story more difficult so let’s pretend it was last night). He got me a gorgeous satin robe and nightgown (in pink of course!). I have been wanting a new robe and to class up my PJ style for a while now so this was so perfect!SatinRobe1SatinRobe2

I have mentioned it before but Walker loves our succulents that we have in the back yard. I have sometimes heard him refer to them as his “pets” and “friends.” Maybe we need to get out more… ;)  So for his V-Day gift, I handmade a heart-shaped concrete planter (and so can you! I will do another post shortly with the information) and planted two succulents inside. In addition, I went to Ikea and bought a new shelf for all of the plants in the backyard. I know that the $7 DIY Plant Stand was a good idea at the time but a year later, it wasn’t looking so hot. Particle board furniture was not made to live outside. Shield your eyes if you don’t want to see an ugly, dilapidated DIY project before it went to its grave.OldPlantStand

I assembled the shelves, arranged all of our plants, and even added a new storage bin and lantern to spruce things up. I also plan to get him a few new pots for some of the succulents that have gotten huge but we will pick those out together later. I surprised him by having the whole thing set up and waiting for him when he got home from work!NewPlantShelf HeartPlanter1 HeartPlanter2

Our original plan for the night was to cook a meal together but we were too tired so went out to our favorite little sushi place for a delicious sushi feast! When we got home, we cracked open a bottle of wine from our favorite vineyard and relaxed. I lounged in my new satin sleepwear, feeling like a queen! It was the perfect night after a long couple of days doing school work and so nice to spend some QT with my valentines (man & dog)! :)

Wine Country Weekend Getaway

I want to start by thanking everyone who voted for Our Cozy Cubbyhole in the Apartment Therapy Homies! It really meant a lot to us and we are hoping that a few of the new readers stick around! You are the BEST! :)

I  know this post is long overdue but I don’t think it is ever too late to share pictures of GORGEOUS wine country! For our two year anniversary, Walker surprised me with a weekend getaway in wine country that was booked for my birthday weekend in January! We intended to use the trip to celebrate our anniversary, his birthday, and my birthday all in one weekend (since they are all within 10 days of each other!).

We headed out of LA as soon as we got off of work on Friday night, arriving in Solvang around 9:10. Squeaking in under their 9:15 last-seating policy (phew!), we had an amazing steak dinner at The Hitching Post that completely blew us away! I think it was honestly the best Filet Mignon I have ever had… it was melt-in-your-mouth tender. On top of that, the french fries and pinot noir were knockouts on their own! They even gave me a little birthday ice cream to finish off the meal. We walked out of there in some sort of incredible meat-haze with a bottle of wine to-go.  We checked into the hotel and spent hours talking and drinking wine in our room until the wee hours of the morning. It was literally a perfect birthday evening. :)WineCountry1 WineCountry2

On Saturday we prepared ourselves for a day of wine tasting with a delightful (-ly filling) lunch. Then we figured it was noon so we were allowed to start drinking! ;) We went to five tasting rooms in town over the next several hours, where we chatted with locals and got spoiled by all of the great pourers. After all of the tastings, we decided it was time to take the edge off of the wine buzz with some chow! Once we had some dinner in our bellies, we finished off the night back at one of the tasting rooms from earlier in the day (The Good Life) with a glass of wine and live music!

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We woke up Sunday morning and needed an amazing/giant Danish breakfast to kick any remaining effects of the day before. ;) So we stuffed our faces with aebleskivers, an omelet with Danish sausage and Havarti cheese for me, an omelet with Nordic lobster and Havarti cheese for Walker, and my signature three-beverage hangover cure (water, OJ, and coffee). We wandered around the town for a while enjoying the fresh, cool air (there was ice on all of the fountains! So rare for California!) and the peace & quiet. We headed home and arrived mid-afternoon so that we had time to unwind (i.e. watch a billion hours of The Sopranos) before getting back to the real world.

It was such an amazing weekend and such a perfect weekend getaway. We love it so much up in wine country that one of these times we may not come back! Just warning you now. ;)

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Valentine’s Gift Idea: 214 Things I Love About You!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all have a great weekend planned. Before I dive into today’s post, I want to bother you one last time and say that today is the last day that you can vote for your favorite blogs on the Apartment Therapy Homies. If you like what you read, we would SO SO SO appreciate it if you took 10 seconds to vote for Our Cozy Cubbyhole so we can attract some new readers. Thank you SO much for your support!!

Valentine’s Day is officially less than a week away and I have talked to a lot of people that are still trying to decide on a cute little gift for their significant others. Well you are in luck because I have an idea that will work for a boy or  girl, is very inexpensive, and is oh-so-thoughtful! Although this was originally a gift that I made for Walker for our anniversary this year, the gift can absolutely work for V Day.

I strated off by carrying around a little piece of paper for several days, constantly jotting down little things I love about my man. Some were sentimental and mushy, some were funny and light-hearted, some were not family-friendly, and others fell somewhere in between. I decided to compile a list of 200 things since it was our two year anniversary but you could do 214 things in honor of 2/14! Once the list was all set, I bought a really beautiful Moleskine pocket sketchbook from Barnes & Noble that had really nice sturdy pages and a classy look.

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I originally planned on decorating the outside but then I realized that this was a gift for a dude and he wouldn’t necessarily care about (or care for) an overly-decorated book. So I decided to keep it plain on the outside so it could be stored anywhere without attracting too much attention. After all, this is kind of a private thing and Walker is a private guy.  In fact, I had to promise I wouldn’t post too many examples of the stuff I wrote in his book on this blog post! ;)

Anyway, once I decided that the front would remain undecorated, I used the inside of the front cover to introduce the concept: Two Years and Two Hundred Things I Love About You. Like I mentioned before, 214 may be a better number to use for Valentine’s Day (and you could do something fun to mimic the slash between the 2 and the 1 like the date! Get creative!).
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Since I promised Walker I wouldn’t post too mant examples, I limited it to two pictures. But you get the idea of how I decorated each page. Again, I kept it simple and not to girly/decorative because it was more Walker’s style this way (but feel free to go nuts with yours!). I used a bunch of stamps (including the cork heart stamp I made for last V Day), some silly drawings, and some awesome SMASH tape that had phrases like “Love it!” and “Like this a lot!”ThingsILoveAboutYou3 ThingsILoveAboutYou4 ThingsILoveAboutYou5

This entire project cost me less than $16 ($14 for the sketchbook and a couple bucks for the tape) but packs a huge punch of LOVE! ;)

Cheap, super thoughtful, and very personal… you can’t find a better combination than that for a Valentine’s Day gift! So get to it… happy crafting!

Erika

I’m Erika, an interior designer with an aesthetic that is a mix of California Bohemian, Mid-Century, and Scandinavian influences with pops of fun color and loads of natural materials. Plus plants, plants, and more plants!

My sweet family (Walker, Juniper & Hank, as well as pups Arlo & Guillermo) just reloacted from Los Angeles, CA, to Lincoln, NE. We would love for you to follow along with us on this journey!

 
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