beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

or in this case, Hazel. :) she freaking loves this little torn up slightly furry magenta thing formerly known as a mouse-shaped cat toy. I was cleaning things out recently and found this in the container with some of my warmer-weather shoes, and hazel has been going nuts over this toy ever since. I mean, clearly she loved it before (it already looked like this) but she has been playing fetch and playing fetch and playing fetch and entertaining herself with it. it is pretty cute.

and speaking of pretty cute: for valentine's matt cooked me dinner, we drank strawberry champagne and we watched Love Actually. And after the movie, while we watched smallville, I edited photos. Matt also got me THREE things of Chocolate. One of them is making a cameo in the picture of Hazel's toy! But anyway, while we watched smallville, things looked kind of like this:

Check out the Gobes--he came down off his usual perch on the back of the couch and sat ON my arm. It was pretty adorable until my arm started falling asleep. But he was SO comfy. And snuggly. And warm. And I liked it. :)

and then I when I got up Matt captured something else pretty adorable. see hazel and Gobi, standing guard outside of the restroom door? Yep, they were waiting on me, and they just stood there, waiting until I came out to cuddle some more. It's like I've got two little shadows, and it makes me smile :)

oh yeah, and speaking of things that make me smile:

1. new business cards and marketing material!! sorry if you're seeing these for the second time--they were on my photography blog too. I have really enjoyed using the ones that bak made me a few years ago, but I finally got through all 500 of them, and it was time for ones with accurate info :) I am also quite pleased because I designed them all by myself. :)

2. matt.

oh, wait, you want more elaboration, huh? well, Matt and I took a trip to Ikea on our way back from Atlanta to see Mike and Renee Superbowl Weekend, (and we got this awesome shelf in walnut, and it now resides in our living room!), and Matt was suuuuuper patient. Like, super-dee-duper amazingly patient. Even when it took half an hour to get some fabric cut. And even when I wanted to look at frames after that. He totally wins a gold medal. Anyway, so we're waiting in the check-out line, looking at all the "buy me! buy me!" items, and we see these.

we look at them. we look at each other. we realize we are both thinking the same thing. we buy them immediately and declare that it might be four of the best dollars we've ever spent.

and later that night at lara and kevin's superbowl party, we had the pleasure of putting them to use. :)