Valentine's Day: Pretzels and Robots

 

 Soft pretzels are my specialty. Today I used a bread machine to make the dough, then shaped them into hearts, dipped them in hot baking-soda-water mix, cooked them, and brushed on some melted butter. (Here's the recipe I used.)

For Mr. Drawworm: my heart on a plate. (Which he quickly devoured.)

This is Mr. Drawworm and my second Valentine's Day since we got married. This year I decided to give him an unusual valentine. Last month he fell in love with a computer game called Machinarium. It's a game involving a little robot searching for his robot love, solving lots of puzzles along the way.

So I drew him a valentine card with the two main characters from the game.

 

 

I started with a pencil sketch, then traced it onto a blank card. I drew the characters with pencil and colored pencil, trying to imitate the faded, rusty art style of the game. (Mr. Drawworm was impressed!)

Mr. Drawworm gave me a lightbox, for when I need to trace things for my art. It's a nice big one! I often talked about how nice it would be to have a lightbox, but for some reason I just never bought one for myself.

Photo from Amazon.

Over the years I've heard people say that they don't celebrate Valentine's Day because they don't believe in only showing your love on one officially approved day.

Personally, I don't see why it has to be either/or. To me, that's like saying "I don't celebrate Thanksgiving because I don't believe in only being thankful in November," or "I don't celebrate Mother's Day because I love my mom every day."

Holidays exist to shake us out of our everyday routines. They remind us to do something extra special, something we wouldn't normally do. There's nothing wrong with showing extra love on Valentine's Day - it doesn't lessen the love you show throughout the rest of the year.

What do you think?