Hey Big Spender

We got a couple of big ticket items during the Labor Day sales, and I'm super excited about both of them.

First up is our new bed. We splurged on a Sleep Number mattress (that was still expensive at 50% off). I've wanted one for ages, and I've been bugging Kevin to upgrade our mattress basically since I moved in with him. I had a glorious pillow-top back in Colorado that I bought while hungover on New Year's Day. But it didn't make financial sense to bring it out to Virginia with me. So it moved to my mom's guest room, and I've been sleeping on an Ikea foam mattress that Kevin loved for it's firmness and I hated for the same reason.

But he finally agreed to buy a new mattress, so we went to the Sleep Number store. We'd also looked at some Tempurpedics, which were wonderful but even more expensive than the Sleep Numbers. We found ourselves torn between a foam-top and a pillow-top, and the price difference ended up making the difference for us.

When it was first delivered, it was a little ridiculous. The delivery men placed both foundation and mattress on top of the slats that our Ikea mattress had laid on, which meant we were sleeping nearly three and a half feet above the ground. But over the weekend we fixed it, and the mattress is now at a much more reasonable height (and Kina can get in bed with us again). I'm so, so, so happy with the new mattress. It's like sleeping on a cloud.

We also bought a new oven. I've been wanting one for a while, and it became more important when the big, front burner on our old oven started turning off at random. It's hard to cook when the heat suddenly disappears. I knew I wanted a flat top oven (we're not hooked up for gas and drip pans are the hardest thing in the world to clean) and Kevin did most of the research to find one.

The oven arrived earlier this week, and I'm super happy about it. It's so much easier to keep clean. I can just wipe it down instead of disassembling it to get at the mess. And all of the burners work, which makes me happy. The only thing is that I'm going to have to relearn how long it takes to cook things. Boiling a pot of water for pasta last night took forever, much longer than it's ever taken me to boil a pot of water before. It's probably because of the glass top between the pot and the heating element. But I will eventually get used to it, and then everything will be wonderful again.