As mouse has mentioned in the past, she's often inspirited by images or things she's come across on the web, in books, or whatever. Not to imply that mouse is really into reading books -- like novels. No, mouse is normally found searching the web for recipes ideas or cleaning tips. LIke how to get grape juice out of a carpet. Ya, aside from the obvious don't buy grape juice to begin with. Obviously that ship had sailed.
For Valentine's Day, mouse wanted to do something special for the people she loves. Girly frilly things, like exchanging gifts with good friends. It's fun and something we all do each February because some of the husband's in our group tend to be forgetful about Valentine's Day. Daddy traditionally does the bare minimum. He will open his wallet and buy the roses -- He will grumble about the price he paid and he will complain ruefully if they don't last at least a week.
So, while searching for ideas, mouse came upon this image that seemed easy enough....Well, that's just adorable, and who doesn't love banana's and strawberries? So mouse wondered how do you make heart--shaped fruit slices? You have to remember that mouse is somewhat challenged in this arena. So she found a teeny cookie cutter...Well, two of them...
Bursting with cleverness, mouse decided to cut out or rather stamp out a smaller banana piece and replace it in the center of a slice of strawberry.
With fumbling fingers mouse set to work on the berries, carefully slicing them, first too thin and then realized the banana was too thick...
For this to truly work, everything must be sliced the same thickness. Back in the olden days mouse's grandma used to have an egg slicer....Hmm...Perfect not too think or thin slices. The whole stamping out process and eating the left overs and mistakes took a whole lot longer than mouse was prepared to spend on this. You can't have just a few....You need a bunch right?
Everything was going well, mouse didn't fill in all the strawberries with banana because the banana began to turn a bit brown (as banana's have the tendency to do).
Then she decided to make heart-shaped pancakes to go along with all those adorable heart shaped fruits. It was truly a labor of love. Now she'd read that you take a metal cookie cutter and fill it in with pancake batter, wait a little and then pull it away....
Perhaps mouse required much more patience, but time was running short, so mouse made regular pancakes and then cut them into hearts -- much easier and less time consuming.
So now it's time for the plating, arranging her heart work (get it, heart work?)...Setting the table, quickly placing little Valentine Cards out...The silly ones kids exchange...
Dusting the plates with powdered sugar...Because that covered the obvious flaws in her work....
Daddy and the kids sat down, and ate. No one said a word about the heart-shapped efforts.
Well, the baby commented -- hearts! That was about as much as mouse got -- but eagerly ate everything.
Kiddo prattled about his class party they would have..And complained about the fruit on his plate (he's not a huge fan of strawberries -- oh well).
Daddy grumbled about something in the Wall Street Journal and ate...as though there was nothing special on his plate.
Let's be clear....mouse didn't do all this work because she wanted accolades.
The only other comment that Daddy made, was he asked mouse why she wasn't eating...Ha!
"Oh just not very hungry." Because she knew damn well who ate all the cut out heart pancakes, plus the mistakes and misshaped fruits, and not to mention the teeny cut out pieces -- seriously mouse would have to work extra hard to burn off all those extra calories.
Daddy got up and felt her forehead, and asked if she was feeling ok. His concern was genuine because he knows that she's not been feeling well.
That moment spoke very loud and clear to mouse, so he didn't notice the hearts on the plate. He noticed mouse and that's really all that mattered.
