Happy Valentines Day!

I remember a time when I was single, and I absolutely hated Valentines day. In fact I remember a time when I was in a relationship and still didn't like Valentines day. Thankfully since meeting my current boyfriend, and love of my life (sick buckets at the ready everyone!), I really enjoy Valentines Day. I am a very lucky girl and Tim always spoils me rotten on Valentines Day (not that he doesn't the rest of the year).

Boyfriend/Girlfriend Tag

I saw this tag post on another persons blog, and I knew that Tim and I had to give it a go! I'm also thinking about the possibility of letting Tim takeover my blog once a week but not quite sure if anyone would like/read it, so let me know in the comments what you think...

When/where did you meet?

Alyssia: We met on a dating wesbite (POF), I got a notification to say that someone had viewed my profile, so I checked it out. He looked cute and seemed like a pretty normal guy, how wrong I was...

Tim: We met on a dating website, and I remember us talking about horror films for a week, before we went on a date.

When did you meet the parents?

Alyssia: I honestly don't remember how long we were together before I met Tim's parents, but I remember going to their house, and his mum being worried of what I would think of their house.

Tim: It was Alyssia's nan's birthday, her mum cooked steak, and I remember being really nervous the entire time, and her dad didn't talk to me at all.

Where/when was your first kiss?

Alyssia: I believe our first kiss was in Tim's car, and he was dropping me home after taking me to Thorpe Park, and that was the night I decided to give our relationship a go. I think I surprised him a little bit when I kissed him.

Tim: We spent the day at Thorpe Park, and then went to dinner afterwards. Then I dropped her home where we kissed in the car. I remember Alyssia's mum called her and asked where she was and Alyssia replied, 'he's dragged me off into the woods to murder me', it made me very worried about what her mum would think of me!

Who said "I love you" first?

Alyssia: I said it first when we spent our first weekend away together in Bristol.

Tim: Alyssia said it first because she had banned me from saying it, but I think we both realised we loved each other at the same time, which was at a fireworks display the weekend before.

What is one thing you wish the other didn't do?

Alyssia: Tim mumbles terribly and it drives me absolutely nuts. Sometimes I have to ask him to repeat himself THREE times before I get it, and I hate that.

Tim: I wish she wouldn't doubt my judgement so much. Sometimes she suggests that I should do things a certain way and then gets annoyed when I do it my own way anyway.

Where was your first date?

Alyssia: He met me in Newbury and we went and sat by the canal and had a good long chat, after that I believe we went to Wetherspoons for dinner, it was all very casual because I wasn't sure I wanted a relationship at the time.

Tim: I met her at Newbury canal, we sat on the bank for a good couple of hours and talked, and laughed. Then we went and had some food, we talked a lot about our past, but Alyssia had to go so it was cut short, I could have talked to her all night.

What eye colour do you wish the other had?

Alyssia: I have to admit I am a sucker for Blue eyes, but Tim's eyes are gorgeous, they look brown but if you really study them there are parts that are actually more green.

Tim: I'm lucky, because Alyssia has blue eyes, which I really like.

What TV show is your favourite?

Alyssia: He likes all things nerdy, and I'm not 100% on his favourite but it would be something like Doctor Who.

Tim: She watches a LOT of TV, but I think if I had to pick her absolute favourite it would be Doctor Who. She also loves things like CSI and Horror TV shows like American Horror Story.

Which food do you like/not like?

Alyssia: He doesn't like broccoli, in fact when I met him there were a lot of things he didn't like that he eats now. He loves Parmesan, he'd have it on everything if I let him!

Tim: She hates tomatoes, and she always picks them out of burgers etc. I have never seen anyone hold food with the tips of their fingers in such disgust before. I don't think I could pick her favourite food, but I know that she loves me to cook her Macaroni Cheese, and she also likes when I make my Garlic bread.

Which drinks do you like/not like?

Alyssia: I'm not sure there is any drink he particularly dislikes, but one of his favourites is Strawberry Milkshake, he'll have one whenever he gets the chance.

Tim: When she used to drink alcohol her favourite was Rosé wine, but I think her new guilty pleasure is original coke. I really can't think of a drink she doesn't like...

What am I good at?

Alyssia: He's very good at technical stuff, being a software developer. He's the first person I go to if I have any technical questions. He is also really good at cooking, a skill he's only picked up since we have been together.

Tim: She is very organised, and very good at telling me off! She has amazing people skills, she's just good at talking to people and understanding them.

Do I often make you angry?

Alyssia: He doesn't often make me really angry, but if he does it's normally over something really stupid, and we've normally made up within an hour. We very rarely have an argument that goes on for a long time.

Tim: No, not often. If she makes me angry it's usually when she asks me to do something for her that I really don't want to do, but we've never fallen out over anything serious.

So there you have it everyone, there is a little insight into our relationship for you all. If you would like to see more of Tim on the blog then let me know in the comments below, and I'll see what I can do!

Owl of Dates #1: Ice Cream and Compliments

I can't remember if I ever wrote about what I got Tim for Christmas, it was such a long time ago... Anyway, I didn't have a great lot of money to spend on him, so I thought it would be cool to make him something. After scouring pinterest for hours on end finding NOTHING of interest, I found something call a Jar of Dates. Essentially what you do is fill a jar full of ideas for dates, you can include pre-paid dates, sweets, vouchers, tickets, whatever you like. Seeing as I didn't have a great deal of money, I just put some ideas for dates in his jar. On top of that, I didn't want to put these ideas into any old jar, and that's when I stumbled across a ceramic owl in Wilkinsons, and I knew it was perfect! That's how the Owl of dates was born!

Up until this week, we hadn't actually drawn an idea out of the owl, but we were feeling like doing something together today, so Tim picked one out and this is what we got.

'Make your own chocolate bowls! Serve your favourite ice cream in the bowls, and use your favourite sweets, and sauces to add to the experience. Whilst eating your ice cream and bowls, give each other two compliments, and then give yourself a compliment'

Tim always gets very excited at the mention of chocolate, so you can imagine his delight when he saw what we would be making. ALSO instead of buying ice cream, Tim really wanted to try out my Easy Peasy Ice Cream which I wrote about last year.

So first things first, the chocolate bowls. All you'll need is a couple of bars of your preferred chocolate, some balloons, and a baking tray.

Start off by melting the chocolate in the microwave, in a plastic bowl. Do this in 10 second bursts, stirring the chocolate each time. Stop microwaving when you can stir it and the lumps begin to melt simply from the heat of the rest of the chocolate.

Place your melted chocolate into a large bowl (if you need to) and dip your balloons into the chocolate, making sure to go as far up the sides as you need to.

Then place them on a baking tray and leave them to set! You may need to repeat the above step a second time to make sure that your chocolate bowls are thick enough.

Once you are happy with them and they are set, simply pop the balloon and peel it away from the chocolate, and you are done!

Now onto the Easy Peasy Ice cream, and you only need two main ingredients for this recipe...

500ml of Double cream, and 400ml of condensed milk! It really is that basic...

Put them in a mixing bowl together, and then whisk away until the mixture thickens like the below picture, it may take a while...

Once your mixture looks like this, you can add your flavourings, sweeties, or whatever you like, just fold it in gently so as not to reverse that whisking you just did!

Tim and I don't do things by halves... and we went for a whopping THREE flavours. All we did was divide the mixture into three separate bowls and then added our flavourings, these are what we went for.

The first flavour is just for me, and it's peanut butter with chocolate chips, I have become completely obsessed with peanut butter ice cream at the moment. The second flavour is caramel, very similar to what I made when I first tried this recipe, with this we mixed the caramel in, but then added little splodges on top so you get extra caramel. The final flavour is pretty plain, but with all the sauces and treats we are going to add later, we didn't want another crazy flavour, so we just went with vanilla. 

Then believe it or not, all you have to do, is let them set in the freezer!

Now Tim and I cannot simply be happy with chocolate bowls, so we had to go crazy with sauces and toppings!

So all that was left was to build our ice cream sundaes! We couldn't help ourselves and had a scoop of each ice cream, a couple of sauces, and of course all the toppings!

That wasn't the end of our date though, we also had to give each other 2 compliments and then give ourselves one compliment! I won't make you all feel sick with our compliments to each other, but I thought I'd let you guys know my compliment to myself, and that was: 'I feel like when I actually try hard, I can achieve whatever I want'. Tim did mention how this was a bit of a back-handed compliment, however I'm not very good at complimenting myself, so I'm going to stick with that!