I hope everyone had an amazing Valentines day! Wether it was spent with a boyfriend, husband, girlfriend or anyone else that you love. I thought I’d do something a little different with our usual Valentines day. Since Ken was stuck at school most of the day, I thought I’d share how I spent the first half of the day and what we got up to in the evening. It’s kind of vlog style – but in pictures. All iphone! Nothing fancy, no pretty lighting or special editing. Just a crappy iphone and my very real life.
We generally don’t go big for any holiday (even Christmas!) just because we prefer to spend that money on trips or other fun things throughout the year. BUT dinner is something we usually do each year. Ken knows not to buy me crazy expensive flowers (lucky you if you got them though!), however I got free ones this year! I was so proud of my thrifty husband. Long story short, the school had put on a cupid/rose event for the students in which people sent notes and a rose to fellow classmates for a small fee. By the end of the day, there were a ton of roses that had been abandoned around the school! Ken knew I would love them so he gathered up a few of them from around the school and proudly handed them to me as he walked our front door. I got 13 beautiful roses for $0! Amazing! AND they are still going strong almost a week later. Can’t beat that.
Since I was having a quiet afternoon at home (doing laundry, working on the blog, cleaning ect), I didn’t get too fancied up. Just my new favourite jeans from ASOS (Click to view them here) and a vintage sweater I shared in my recent thrift haul video. Click HERE to watch that.
Ahh, that beautiful light we get in our bedroom windows. I love it.
It can’t be Valentines day with out a little pink on the face! I slapped on an oldie but a goodie for the day – my L’oreal Color Riche in Julianne’s Nude. You can buy it HERE
Later in the afternoon, I suited myself up to head out into the rain. I’ve just started taking French classes through the school, one of which happened to land on Valentines day How romantic! Learning french, in France on Valentines day. I layered my new ASOS rain coat on top of my outfit, traded in my slippers for proper shoes and added my trusty tote bag. It makes me feel like a serious student if I show up to class with some paper, a note book and a pen in my tote bag 🙂
And I was off! I always leave the house a few minutes early to ensure I have time to snap a few pictures or Insta-story. Fontainebleau is so cute is hard not to snap a picture of everything.
I have to say, I have been really enjoying my french classes. I have VERY little french under my belt, so we are starting from square one but it’s been good! Slowly but surely starting to pick things up. Even just learning the number system has helped so much. Being able to understand the price of things as people say them to you is so much easier than trying to type it out on my phone – haha! But I’ll admit, I get nervous before each class. Our teacher is great but she loves to have us read french conversations out loud to the class to practice pronunciation. It certainly does help, but we hate doing it! You feel like such an idiot stunningly through the most simple of sentences. What can I expect though – I can’t learn a new language overnight. At least I’m in the same boat as the other 20 students.
In the evening Ken joined me at home, we had some time to just chill out (he had a long day of classes as usual) before heading out for our dinner reservation at 9:30pm. Yes, you read that right. 9:30pm. For dinner. Back at home that would have been my bed time but we have slowly been acclimatizing to the European timing of things. Late lunch (sometimes with wine -haha!), dinner at 9pm, and on the weekend, parties don’t even get started until close to midnight! My Canadian brain can barely process it! But, 6 weeks in, it’s almost starting to feel normal.
I had high hopes that the rain would stop in the evening and I could wear something other than boots to dinner but the rain had other plans. I was REALLY hoping I would get to wear a dress for the first time since arriving but it was just wayyyy to cold. Trying hard to be practical. So I kept things simple by just changing into a darker wash jean and a heeled sock bootie. A dark wash jean always makes an outfit feel more dressy and put together. Especially when paired with a classic style bootie. I’m also still really loving the straight leg trend. It pairs perfectly with the sock bootie.
These particular jeans were from H&M but are sold out now. Asos sells a similar pair that you can check out HERE if you like. The sock booties are still available HERE.
This little bag from Zara makes my heart go pitter patter. I picked it up in Zara in Paris when Ken and I were there a few weeks ago. And it’s still in stock! HERE. I just took a little look through the site myself and holy moly – so many cute bags right now!
Slapped on a little more of the same lipstick – and I was ready to hit the town.
If there is pasta on the menu, you can bet that’s what I’ll order. I must have a little Italian in my blood because pasta (of any kind) is my weakness. I’m also super picky about how it’s cooked. I’ve turned in a little pasta snob I think!
This was was super tasty and fresh. YUM! Ken is a pizza guy and couldn’t resist the Calzone.
Look at those googly eyes staring at my camera man!
This is Ken’s “Ok, enough pictures, lets just enjoy now”.
So I did. I put the camera away and we sat drinking our wine, eating our seriously rich chocolate dessert and giggled the night away.
I hope you enjoyed following along on our Valentines day. It was a first one married so it felt extra special 🙂 Ah, so cheesy. But it’ll be fun to look back on in years to come 🙂
Xo, Andrea