Our Chinese New Year / V-Day

This weekend was pretty unusual since it was not only V-day but also Chinese New Year!  Happy New Year!!!  We went home for new year's eve dinner and had all the traditional foods!  Yummy!  But I didn't take any pics of that.  ;)

For V-day, Russ and I thought it would be fun to host a V-day dinner w/ all of our friends again!  Last year, it was sooo much fun b/c we had just put up our dining room light and I made surf and turf.  I also made hearts w/ pics in it; a heart wreath filled it w/ pics; and a V-day menu.  It was soo much fun!!  Well, Russ thought everything was fun except for helping me cut out giant hearts for the wreath!

This year, I recycled the big hearts w/ the pics; skipped the heart wreath, and hung little hearts all over the arches in our house and on our railing.  I also made this ribbon-picture thing and hung them up too!  It was super cute!!

Russ helped w/ cutting out the smaller hearts.  He wasn't thrilled w/ the job again, but he survived.  ;)

Anyway, here's the arch by our front door:

The stairway:

You'll have to ignore the complete drabbiness of our place since I haven't quite figured out what colors I want to paint everything and where I want to hang our pictures.  Not to mention, Russ has prohibited me from spending $$ on our house until after the wedding!  =(

The arches by our kitchen and bar area:

The heart pictures on our fireplace:

And then, I saw this super cute ribbon picture thing and thought it would be fun to re-create it!  I didn't realize what I giant task the ribbon-picture would be!!  I wanted to have V-day ribbon, so I went to Target to look at ribbon.  Turns out, that was a total waste!  Target doesn't seem to have any ribbon; or at least the ghetto Target I went to!  Then I trekked to Santa Monica to go to Michael's and Jo-Anns.  After perusing for about an hour, I finally found some really cute ribbon!

This is the final product of the fireplace area:

And now on to the good stuff...the food!!!  Everyone made a little bit of something and we provided the main course!  First up was Anita and Jason with the proscuitto wrapped shrimp and scallops:

If you're wondering what the orange looking thing is in the above pic, it's the "pesci" one for Haeli since she's pesci and doesn't eat meat, aside from seafood.

This was followed by pear, candied walnut, gorgonzola cheese salad from Audrey:

And then for the main course, we had sole en papillote!

I forgot to take a picture of it before it got un-wrapped, but basically it's a fish fillet w/ veggies, lime, and oil wrapped in parchment paper and steamed in the oven for 12 min!  When it's wrapped, it looks like a half-moon.  And then you open it up and it's delish (at least I hope it was!)  And to top it off, it was actually quite easy to make!!  The sole en papillote paired very well with Haeli's polenta:

Then we took a break to discuss some politics, CA's impending BK, and other random "intellectual" issues.  After cleaning up a bit, we moved to the living room to watch some Winter Olympics and eat Anita's delish V-day Trifle!

It was extremely indulgent!  There was red velvet cake, chocolate pudding, whip cream, chocolate pieces and strawberries in it.  Yummy!  Of course, we had some dessert leftovers and Anita scooped a cup for everyone!!  ;)

And what's a party without swag bags!  These weren't your typical swag bags filled w/ random goodies to use on yourself!  They were swag bags filled with the edible goodies!  ;)  I made swag bags filled with dark chocolate M&Ms, peanut M&Ms and little Reese's.  Audrey also made swag bags filled with a variety of Japanese candies!!

Our pumpkin hasn't quite deflated yet, so it still remains in our house, longing to join his brothers/sisters from our pumpkin-carving party!  hahaha.

Happy Chinese New Year Valentine's Day!!