Happy Valentine's Day!

Another week has gone by.  It was a busy one.  I spent most of it in London for work.  While I didn't have any time for doing any real sight seeing, I was able to have dinner with a friend, which was a lot of fun.  Otherwise, I spent most of the week on a plane or in meetings. 

This weekend has been fun filled.  Yesterday Teddy and I had a full day of activities planned to celebrate Valentine's Day.  We started the morning with a couples massage at Kaya Day Spa in Chicago.  This is one of my favorite places to go and relax.  Teddy has never had a massage before, so I was looking forward to seeing his reaction to it.  The room for the couples massage had flower petals and candles everywhere.  It was a great way to start the weekend.  Teddy and I were very relaxed after that.  If only every day could start that way!

Then we decided to go see that new movie Valentine's Day.

It was supposed to be the American version of Love Actually, which is one of my favorite movies (Top 10)

The promotional photos, number of celebrities, number of story lines and theme of love are about all these two have in common.  I personally thought Love Actually was much better and linked each character together more effectively.  Valentine's Day was pretty good, but I think because my expectations were at the Love Actually standard I over hyped it myself.  Taylor Swift's part was completely pointless to the storyline and it seemed like they added her just to say that Taylor Swift was in it, to attract a certain demographic.  The individual stories of each character were not developed enough.  And the main story line of Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner was pretty unbelievable.  (spoiler alert!!!!)

The movie starts w/ Ashton proposing to his girlfriend, who later in the movie dumps him and then that same day ends with Jennifer Garner realizing she's in love with Ashton.  I don't know about you, but I don't think I would go jumping into something with someone that proposed to someone else that same morning.....pretty unrealistic. 

(end spoiler!!!)

Overall, it was fairly entertaining, but won't be a favorite of mine.

After the movie, Teddy and I tried out a new restaurant in Chicago on Michigan Ave.  It's called Mercat a la Planxa.  The head chef is Chef Jose Garces, who just won the Next Iron Chef competition.  The restaurant specializes in Catalonian cusine, which is basically Spanish tapas.  They had a chef's choice 3 course menu for Valentine's day, which was delicious.  His flavor combinations and textural combinations in each dish blew us away.  I definitely plan to go back there sometime.  It's a bit of a splurge but Teddy and I thought the food quality and quantity made it more than worth it.

Today has been a pretty relaxed day.  We went to breakfast and then decided to take a stroll through Downer's Grove's annual Ice Fest.  Each of the Downtown Downers shops sponsors an ice sculpture, and there are ice sculpture artists creating sculptures to be judged at the end of the ice fest.  Here are some pictures of some of our favorite sculptures.

Micky & Minne

Aww...love

Teddy with Popeye and Olive Oil

Me with cupid

Snowboarder in the Olympics

I was surprised at how detailed a lot of the sculptures were.  Many looked like crystal and not ice.  It is certainly cold enough today to keep them all in tact.  All in all, it was pretty cool. 

This weekend was a great one to celebrate Valentine's Day together!  I hope you all had a great V-Day too.