Guys! I got my first batch of real mail this week! It was stupendously amazing and I happy-danced all day long, for seriously. (If you want to send me mail, you can, too!)

First bit of mail came from Stephanie A. And, guys, it had kitties and Washi tape on it.

And inside was a super sweet Valentine!

I feel a little bit bad for mocking Valentine’s Day now, because this gave me all the good feels. Thank you, Stephanie A.!

The next treat came from Anne N. Guys. She even wrapped it.

And the only thing better than getting a wrapped present in the mail randomly is opening it to find out that it is THIS!

That’s right. Penis cookie cutters. Nevermore will I have to lament my lack of penis cookie cutters. Thank you, Anne N.!

Seriously, you ladies totally made my week.

And then you guys made my week again with your hilarious comments…

I told you my pink hug cookies sort of turned out more like almost-pinkish peanut butter flaccid hugs, and you guys ran with it.

pins&needles • It’s okay; sometimes it’s nice to have a hug without an erection being involved.

Too true.

Annnnd, then I wrote about trying to be more of a caregiver and everyone assumed I was pregnant. Sorry guys. I’m not. (Jeez, I tested a cocktail like two days ago.) I was actually talking about charitable giving, not bebbehs.

CurlyBlu • Dude – congrats on NOT being pregnant! I was worried that was going to be your announcement. And then I would be worried that all the pins you tested would be cutesy ways to display pics of naked baby ass. Also, you can’t drink when you’re pregnant and your drunk-blogs (or blogging about your drunken escapades) are hilarious! Cheers!

I’m glad you’re not heartbroken.

And aside from sparking a debate about bacon, my Valentine’s Day post inspired some poetry:

Kelly724 • Roses are red, violets are blue, I fucked up a pin just for you. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Brilliant.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Pintestes. I hope you know that you are all the loves of my Internet heart. If I could send you all a Valentine, I would… Ok, I probably wouldn’t, because I’m a lazyass… but I would think about it and plan on it and then feel guilty for not doing it, so there’s that.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d make something today that is better than chocolate. Better than chocolate? Yes. There are only two things in the world better than chocolate, and one of them is bacon.

Image from The Paper Mama

Yes, you are looking at bacon Valentines. This is a tradition I think I could get behind.

I bought a package of bacon and brought it home with me, then attempted to lay it out in heart-shapes. Turns out, though, that I bought some cheap-ass flimsy bacon and it didn’t quite sit right.

My hopes of this turning out in any way adorable kind of went out the window at this point. I mean, these kind of look more like anatomical hearts than Valentine hearts.

Nevertheless, into the oven it went.

One of the great discoveries of my adult life is that you can bake bacon, by the way. I never ever fry bacon because I’m scared of the popping grease. Mostly, I just stand back and scream obscenities, and occasionally poke it with a fork when I try to fry it. It doesn’t end well. So baking bacon is like the awesomest idea ever.

See? You just take the pan out of the oven and voila! No popping grease all over yourself and the kitchen. Just delicious crispy bacon… that sort of-ish resembles heart-shapes, maybe.

But the important thing is that they were damn delicious. Husband and I totally stuffed ourselves silly with delicious bacon. Heart-shaped or not, I think that still means it’s a win.

For Valentine’s Day, as with most holidays, my favorite part is the snacks. There’s always the traditional Valentine chocolate, of course, but when you live on Pinterest, you find lots of other Valentine treats, too.

Image from Daily Nibbles

I figured these were a no-fail plan. I mean, I make the plain old peanut butter kiss cookies all the time, so these should be no sweat. And I even checked to make sure I had all the ingredients first, I swear. I had two jars of creamy peanut butter in the pantry.

Unluckily for me, they were both almost empty. (Sometimes being married is like having a rude roommate, except you can’t really leave passive-aggressive notes.)

So, I had to supplement with some crunchy peanut butter.

Really, though, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not a major substitution.

And it looked fine once I mixed it all up.

As with all good Valentine treats, the next step was dying it pink.

The results of this dye job made my heart sink a little.

You can’t quite tell from the picture, but the hue was a little more “bloody stool” than I was going for, and the crunchies in the crunchy peanut butter made for some visually interesting chunks. But I forged ahead because I was running out of time before I had to leave for rehearsal.

So I rolled little ugly peanut butter shit-balls in pink sprinkles.

And stuck them in the oven.

Alas, the color did not magically fix itself during the baking process.

But, when life gives you shitty little sort-of pink peanut butter cookies, you might as well finish them.

And, really, once they were bedecked with the hugs, they didn’t look that bad…

Upon returning home from rehearsal, however, I found that the hugs had sort of lost their erections in further melting.

And so, I am left with a plate full of almost-pink-but-more-brown peanut butter flaccid hugs. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

I know I just did a plain old manicure post yesterday and not a Cocknails video. Sorry about that, dudes, but the videos take a lot of time and effort and I had a severe case of the blahs this week, so it didn’t happen.

I do have a cocktail for you today, though, so just smash today’s post and yesterday’s post together in your mind and pretend, ok? It’s even a Valentine-themed cocktail, because I love you. Ahhn.

This is a chocolate raspberry truffle cocktail.

Image from The Galley Gourmet

I told you I don’t really like Valentine’s Day, but who doesn’t love delicious chocolatey cocktails? I’ll get in the spirit for that.

Now, you’re really supposed to have some kind of fancy schmancy chocolate liqueur for this and also “premium” vodka. I worked with what I had.

I’m also not sure that Reddiwip is quite in the spirit of this, but hell if I was going to make “fresh” whipped cream.

This recipe did, however, make two cocktails, so I lovingly also prepared one for my significant other.

Please note my festive towel.

And the cocktail was then rejected by said significant other. Fine, dude. But if you think you’re getting something other than a questionable Pintester cocktail for Valentine’s Day, you may possibly be mistaken.

And so I had to drink them both myself. I had to. There was no other choice. They were delicious, by the way, and I drank them enthusiastically… and a little too fast.

So, then, for Valentine’s Day, my significant other also got begged repeatedly to take me to the drug store because I neeeeeeeded some Doritos and please-please-please I’m way too drunk to go by myself and I neeeeeeed Doritos. (I was rejected again, just so you know.)

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day, and I hope your significant other actually appreciates it when you test possibly disgusting cocktails on him and then drink his for him and then drunkenly demand that he take you to the store to buy Doritos.

Y’all, I don’t give a flying crap about Valentine’s Day, except as an excuse to find chocolate on sale at Walgreen’s the day after. I am of the slightly grouchy opinion that it’s a holiday made up by card companies to facilitate the buying of 35 Transformers or Winnie the Pooh perforated fucking cards so that you can pick the dumbest ones to give to the kid you like least in your class. (Fine. Maybe I have some past hurts I need to get over…)

But Valentine’s Day is also right close to National Wear Red Day, a campaign to make women aware of their risk of heart disease. Heart disease claims the lives of nearly 500,000 American women every year, but it’s often written off as something that only older men need to worry about. National Wear Red Day’s mission is to combat this misconception and raise awareness among women. It was February 1st this year, so I’m fashionably late, but I thought I’d do a manicure in tribute.

Image from Holy Manicures

I started with a base of white.

And in case you’re wondering what color, it’s Revlon “White On White.” (You had one job, clever nail polish namers at Revlon.) It’s super old and probably discontinued.

I decided to free-hand the hearts, because no good could come of it, and I’m in the business of No Good. Surprisingly, it didn’t fail that hard.

(I don’t know what color this is because it came in a little Christmas gift set with like 4 tiny nail polishes. O.P.I. something-or-other. If I were the nail polish namer, I’d probably go with “Menstrual Period Day 2″ or something… so it’s a good thing that’s not my job.)

The one on my right hand was slightly more deformed because I painted it with my left hand.

I thought about free-handing the little EKG heart-waves or whatever you call them with just the nail polish brush, but ultimately decided to go with the highly technical toothpick method.

If you’re following along at home, I found that a dotting method is far superior to a dragging method. Although, if you’re like me and totally fucked up one of your nails while painting a heart on your non-dominant hand and then had to go back and smooth it out and put an extra coat of white on, you’re going to be in a world of trouble no matter what. Just sayin’.

From far away, they’re not so bad really.

But, close-up they’re pretty much a hot mess. [Insert favorite quote from Clueless here: "Full-on Monet. From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess."]

Yeah, whoever was hooked up to the EKG on my right hand had an incurable arrhythmia or something.

I learned from the mistakes of my past and did not put a top coat on this yet… I think I’ll wait til tomorrow, or maybe just use Pam.

Have fun creating your own wacky Valentine’s Day/National Wear Red Day manicure, and be sure to keep your heart health in mind, because I love you and I don’t want you to die, ok?