It’s becoming more and more rare that my whole immediate family is together anymore. My sister and brother-in-law live in Virginia, my brother is in Missouri, I am in Kentucky, and my parents are in Florida. So, you could see how that might make things difficult. We were all together in Destin, and so my mom jumped at the idea of doing some family photos together. She wanted the traditional white shirts and jeans on the beach look, so we humored her.

It poses a bit of a challenge, however, to take family photos when you need to be *in* the family photos. So, all the photos that I am in either Lee or my mom had to take for us. Usually I would set up a shot, get everything fixed in the camera, tell Lee what I was envisioning for the shot, and have him click it. However, it was really hard for me to know how to arrange people when I had to stick myself in the mix as well.

I made everybody get *under* the boardwalk for individual/couple shots. It was the only shade around that I could find! They were great sports and climbed on under!

Isn’t my brother so cute??

This is our attempt at a serious, sassy family pic. Pretty ridiculous.

It’s kinda next to impossible to get *everybody* acting normal at the same time. We are only halfway there in the pic below.

Oh, Amy Rebecca.

My siblings. I love them.

This is what I mean about the group arranging thing. Eeeeh… awkward.

We are walking and swinging our hands. This prolly looks kinda funny if you don’t know that. Ha.

The Outtakes: Okay, because this is my family, I can do this. We are all pretty ridiculous, and this is reflected in some of the “outtakes” that were captured.

So, the day we shot… I thought the sun was going to be perfect. It was cloudy and was being diffused nicely. And then, as soon as we got ready to shoot, it came out again. Sun + the glare off the white sand= not ideal for pictures. It was reaaallly bright. Check out our faces in the next few pics (especially my sister– haha!)

I have no excuse for the ugly face. I dunno.

This next series is totally my dad being my dad… and my mom saying “Bob, quit it!”

I promise you, Adam’s eyes are probably crossed. This is his standard “make a face” face.

“Happy Valentine…”  It’s what Lee kept saying to me yesterday when I would try to tell him Happy Birthday. He would respond with “Happy Valentine.” Never “Valentine’s Day“– no, that would be too normal. Lee is a Valentine’s baby… and, as I liked to keep reminding him yesterday, he turned 29 (and I’m still just 27 He is such a humble man who doesn’t ever prefer to be in the spotlight, that he always is trying to deflect the attention from himself. For this reason, we couldn’t just have a birthday party for him. Instead it was a “Lee and Jason (his roommate)’s birthday/ V-Day/ Chinese New Years party.” To round out the celebrate-everything nature, I had Christmas plates and a few other random holidays thrown in there.

Our first dance was actually last year, on his birthday, at his cousins wedding. The song? Frank Sinatra’s “My Funny Valentine.”  I think that makes an appropriate caption for this picture:

(I think he was a little tired of getting his picture taken… what do you think?)

Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m Martha, and I collected a few ideas from the internet and elsewhere that I just had to make happen this year.

First, I got SO inspired by these Red Velvet Cake balls by Bakerella. And let me tell you, they were a HIT!

You begin by baking a red velvet cake from the box. Let it cool and then crumble it all up in a bowl. You mix in a tub of cream cheese icing and incorporate it. I went ahead and used my fingers, which is messy, but probably the best option. Then you roll them into quarter sized balls, place on a cookie sheet and chill in the fridge for several hours. Then they look like this:

Then I melted chocolate almond bark in a bowl in the microwave and began the dipping:

Then, decorate away! I used valentine’s sprinkles, some white almond bark that I dyed pink, red hots, crushed pistachios, white sugar and these adorable pearl-like sprinkles.

I had some leftover white almond bark, so I made a few of these yummies. Take two Ritz crackers, spread peanut butter between them and then dip in chocolate– sooo yummy. I think its the sweet and salty combo- so good and easy!

After they were done, I threw some in some packages to send to my family, including these cute robot cards I made!

My sister got these cute flips:

And everybody got some of these tattoos from the dollar spot at Target, which they were instructed to apply and take a picture to send me. I especially liked my brother-in-law who had them all over his arm (thanks to his lovely wife, I’m sure).

On to the NEXT project!

It was something in the kitchen, involving these–

What could I be cooking with pink water balloons? Well, everything is better with chocolate, right?

I got this awesome idea from this cute site and couldn’t resist! Basically, you melt chocolate chips, transfer them to another bowl (that step is important, I found out after all my balloons kept popping b/c the bowl was hot!) Dip them in chocolate and set them on parchment to harden. Then comes the fun part–

And you end up with this beautiful-ness.

At the party I loaded them up with homemade whipped cream and berries.

I think she liked it.

I also made a heart-shaped cookie cake, well, because I had the pan and it felt sort of obligatory. Plus, they needed to blow out candles on something! But obviously, I do not excel in my cake decorating skills

We currently have three bouquets of flowers at our house. People love us. It’s wonderful.

I do have more to report, but I’d say that is sufficient Valentine eye candy for now

He has a new name, that boyfriend of mine. “Gear Man.” Oh, I love him.