Yesterday consisted of two of my favorite things...

[Yummmm!]

...shopping and baking.

Seriously, what is better than that?

I finally have had some more days off interspersed between my work days instead of one long run of work days. This has left time for some of the things I've really been wanting to do, like take our wedding money and shop for more home stuff!! I did a little shopping with Nick before work on Monday up at Crate & Barrel (it's not the same without the "&"), but yesterday I went with my mom around Salem and did some work. The goal of the day was to get pots and pans. Nick and I got all of our awesome appliances, all of our dinnerware (with the exception of the platter and bowl we ordered Monday to finish our "Aspen" set), most of our flatware (we also finished that up Monday), tons of kitchen gadgets, all of our drink-ware/bar-ware, and countless other amazing gifts, but we didn't get our pots and pans. Honestly, I'm glad, because when we registered, we kind of just picked something because it's kind of overwhelming honestly and we also didn't want to pick something too expensive because we couldn't expect people to spend an arm and a leg on us. Looking back at our registry, I don't like the pots and pans we selected, so it was nice to have the chance to go back and look at things and really see what would be perfect for Nick and I - especially since we both love to cook!

Nick did some research the night before with me, and we settled on the Calphalon Contemporary 11-piece, non-stick set. It was on sale at Macy's from $500 to $449 and came with a bonus of a 7-piece utensil set specific for the Calphalon pans AND an extra 12" every-day pan. Hello! Awesome deal! Not to mention, we get 20% off anything for a month after the wedding to complete our registry, even though it wasn't originally on the registry, so it ended up being about $350! Woohoo! I love a bargain, that's for sure. I got a little distracted at Macy's and also picked up the serving bowl and serving platter that matches our Martha Stewart "Lisbon" dinnerware, which I never saw when we registered for the place settings in the first place. In true Macy's fashion, those were also already 30% off before our 20% off completion. Ultra score.

In addition to Macy's, we went to Target because we had a million gift cards and a credit from a returned knife set. Here I bought the rest of our towels in gray and white, a duvet, a sheet set, kitchen towels, chip clips (an essential), a flatware tray, annnnnnd makeup remover. 'Cause, y'know, I needed it. We got 10% off for registry completion here, so I only had to use about $40 of our wedding money after gift cards! Such a good deal.

[Yesterday's haul]

I brought everything home, and added it to the huge pile of gifts in my parents' front room, but not before I reorganized for probably the 5th time! It's amazing how many gifts we got, as well as how many we've been able to buy afterwards because of everyone's generosity. It is overwhelming, and we are so so grateful to have people in our lives that care about us and are happy for us and want us to get a good start in building our home and life together! Yes, thank-you notes are on my to-dos for this month :)

After that exhausting shopping spree, I got out my beautiful KitchenAid mixer and baked a delicious carrot cake from the "Mother's" restaurant cookbook. To die for. I'm baking in my parents' kitchen still, but it will be that much better when we finally do get to unpack our own stuff and put it all in its little place and use it all! In the meantime, I'll just use my mixer periodically and maybe reorganize all of our stuff every once in awhile, just because :)

[So much amazing stuff! Thank you all!]