my italian valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day! Even if you don't celebrate it with someone {or if you think the holiday is bogus}, I hope you get an extra dose of happy somewhere along the line today :)

Since Valentine's Day fell on a Monday, we decided to celebrate on Saturday night. This is our first married Valentine's Day, though it's hard to believe this is our sixth Valentine's Day as a couple. {I feel SO old! AHH.} Anyway, in honor of {cv}'s Italian heritage and the crazy long name I inherited from him, we decided to make PASTA for our Valentine's meal!

We picked up some genuine Italian flour on Federal Hill in Providence and also 

picked up some semolina flour at Whole Foods because we weren't sure which 

recipe we were going to use.

One of the registry items we didn't receive was this KitchenAid pasta attachment, which {cv} insisted we spend one of our gift cards from the wedding to buy. After this fun night, I'm really glad he pushed for this little gadget.

Our best man {and loyal reader!}, {ao}, bestowed this KitchenAid goodness upon us as a wedding gift. I've made good use of it over the past ten months, but because of our small kitchen, it can't find a permanent home on our counters just yet. {Can we please grow up soon and buy a house? sigh.} Regardless, I was happy to pull it out from its hiding place for our night of pasta-making fun!

We decided to attempt the semolina egg pasta...

The ingredients cost next to nothing {it's literally flour, eggs, salt, and water}.

When the first batch came out of the mixer, something just didn't seem right...but {cv} tried valiantly to make it work.

{no...this isn't a cookie-making photo...though it sure looks like we changed plans}

{a dough heart?}

When we tried to pass those dough "cakes" through the attachment, this is the mess which fell into {cv}'s hands...

At this point, we were both DYING of laughter at our failure...and were extremely thankful for the second bag of flour we purchased because of our indecisiveness.

Needless to say, the directly imported Italian flour worked like a charm. This is what came out of the mixer in the second batch.

And this is clearly what success from the pasta maker is supposed to resemble...

Though I couldn't take pictures of the next step {since we needed all four hands!}, you can at least see the length of what we were working with here...

...about to meet their shredder...

{shredder = pasta magic maker}

TADA!!!!!!!! I'm like a proud little mother, though I'm just a proud faux Italian ;)

Can you see my love of cobalt blue carried from our wedding into our kitchen?

Looks like we bought the pasta...but we didn't! YAY!

And to top it all off? My parents so generously DROVE a few jars of my mother's perfect basil pesto from Indiana to Rhode Island last summer. I've only used two jars in the ensuing seven months so I could have it for any special occasions...and this seemed like the perfect one. {Bigger bonus: my mom made this batch on my favorite day of the year...other than Christmas or Fourth of July, my birthday!}

So...there you have it! My Valentine's Day with my Italian valentine, though I guess {by default} I'm Italian too? haha. I can see pasta-making in our future...and the fun we'll have with our future baby {v}'s with uncle {ao}'s mixer ;)

Much love to you all on this day of love! Thank you all SO much for your sweet words yesterday...you are one of the main reasons I've been keeping a smile plastered on my face. 

Happy Valentine's Day :)

xoxo {av}

And to {cv}, you are WAY more than I ever deserved...I am so blessed to call you my husband and that we get to experience this adventure otherwise known as life together. I count my blessings every day for your love, your compassion, your understanding, and your willingness to put up with little ol' me. I love you. Forever.