Fondue Palooza!

Monday, as you know, was Valentine's Day. In years gone by (remember this, Jenna?) I'd go to work decked out in black from head to toe and watch with some bitterness as all the ladies around me received flowers from their men.

Well...a decade or so has gone by and most of them don't get anything from the men anymore...and I now wear red in hopes that one day I'll have a Valentine of my own. Baby steps.

Actually, I loved the way the day began. As you may remember (from the 6 a.m. serenade stories), I wake up to the radio, and yesterday, the song playing when the alarm went off was Mandisa's God Speaking. The song was almost over and the words that awakened me were "God is speaking, 'I love you.'" Isn't He great?

I wore my sparkly red shirt to work, and it's a good thing I did because I received a little sparkly in campus mail too!
Isn't that hysterical? My Monday lunch date sent that to me. I think she was trying to get back in my good graces after bailing on me to spend time with her husband. (Just kidding, Jenny! I love you!!)

After work, I had a friend over for dinner. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember her from the Hershey, PA chronicles. Amber was my traveling buddy when I vacationed there. (She's not in the pictures to come today.) I'd decided a while ago that it would be more fun to spend the evening with someone, and I thought preparing a meal would help keep my mind occupied, so I invited her over and planned...

...a fondue palooza!!

I'd had fondue once in my life. I'd never made it. Kind of a gamble to invite company for it then, wasn't it? But in my opinion, it was also a success!

My first problem in hosting a fondue party was...um...I don't own a fondue pot.

Details.

My Mom, chocolate-making-queen-of-my-life, allowed me to borrow two of her chocolate melting pots. That worked!

Recipe number one...cheese fondue with French bread to dip....probably my favorite fondue of the night. But then again, I'm a cheese addict.
Okay this is not pretty but it sure did taste good. Pizza fondue! (Dipped bread in that too)

And to conclude the adventure...chocolate marshmallow fondue with strawberry slices and mini caramel cupcakes. YUM YUM YUM.

I even brought out the festive tablecloth and snatched up Meijer's next-to-the-last bottle of sparkling grape juice!

After dinner, we gathered round the laptop to look at where-are-they-today pictures of people we graduated with (thanks, Facebook!), talked about places we could possibly travel to in the future, watched some funny YouTube videos, and caught up on some sitcoms. (She introduced me to Mike and Molly - do y'all watch that?)

I'm so glad she came over and I'm so glad the fondue rocked! I didn't even have frozen pizzas on standby so it's a good thing the recipes did not fail.