if i do say so myself....

First and foremost, let me come clean and say I got this idea from pinterest.  (And if I'd planned ahead and had more time, I would have made mine much cuter to look more like hers!)

So - my St. Valentine's Day gift to Larry was pretty cute and clever.... even if I do say so myself.  I made him a "Food Passport."

 

(I google imaged "passport," then used text boxes to write what I wanted to.  You can see the bottom text box didn't blend as well as I would have wished, but oh well.)  I printed the picture in color (obviously) and then used a glue stick to cover up the chevron patterned mini-notebook.

 The inside cover is a picture of Larry eating fried chicken on Canal Street in New Orleans.  Because that is the kind of guy he is.  (Complete with random stamps I found by the printer at work.)

                                          

The inside of the passport is names of restaurants that we've either never tried, or have only been to a couple times but really enjoyed:

DISCLAIMER:  I know I could have made it *so* much cuter.  Keep in mind that I finished this at about 3pm on 2/14.  I would have preferred a journal with blank pages, but HEB had a limited selection. 

There are 80 restaurants in there, with the back 5 page open for random places we may go.  I bought an inkpad and date stamp so that we could stamp the date that we visited each place.  My thought was that we would just date stamp it when we got home.  But Larry had a much better idea.... he decided he would carry the passport with him anytime we go out, and ask the restaurant to stamp it for him.  You know... like, a real passport.  I was like, "they aren't going to have a stamp!"  But then I realized they  might - and even if it said "Invoiced" or "Paid" or "Received on" or something like that, it would still be pretty fun.

Well - tonight we took it out to get the first stamp.  We decided last minute that we didn't want to eat at home and didn't feel like braving Friday night traffic, so we ended up at our old standby - Johnny Carino's.  We go here at least twice a month and are on friendly terms with many of the staff members.  Byrd is our bartender and Sarah is the GM.  We decided that even though they weren't listed in the passport, we wanted to include them... because there really is something to be said for a place where everybody knows your name.  So say what you will about chain restaurants, but I'm so happy that Carino's was our first stamp.  (And yes!!!! They had a stamp!)  We had them sign and date it for posterity's sake - since they were the first.

 

(Blossom photo bombed!)

It will take awhile, but I look forward to getting that thing full of stamps.  Lots of calories to consume and memories to be made!

****Also, I learned that I could probably perfect and sell the food passport.   People were quite impressed with it.