(Early) Kitchen-y Christmas

I love getting mail. Well, FUN mail...not bill mail. Who likes bill mail? Not I!

While I was stateside, I managed to buy a lot of stuff which wouldn't fit in my suitcase allowance..hey, what can I say..I go for gusto. Anyway, I had to ship a lot of it home, which included some Le Creuset I managed to get my paws on from Gilroy. Given, I bought these about a week before I actually went to the Le Creuset factory, but I didn't wanna risk waiting and the factory not having my color (by chance). And, good thing I DID buy them when I had the chance since the factory store, shockingly, didn't have it. They had some items in the "Flame" color, as you see pictured in the tea kettle I got for Eric, but they didn't really have anything in the "Caribbean" blue which would've been a total buzz kill for me. Not only that, but I ended up getting these pieces for WAY cheaper than I would've got them in France..and yes, it was still cheaper even when shipping them here.  

My 7.25 quart round French oven and my  2.75 quart sauce pan:

As silly as it sounds, I was stoked about the tea kettle cause the handle on top folds down so it'll allow you to put it in the pantry / cabinets. 

Plus, my "Flame" peppermill came in!

In addition to getting my Le Creuset stuff in, I also mauled Amazon for some cookbooks since our "Book Mark" at the local commissary didn't happen to carry them. Buying books on the economy isn't all that easy considering everything is in Dutch...besides, we seem to live off of Amazon anyway! So, I'm really excited to try these out:

Oh, and I did an experiment. Ya see, my cute Belgian house has not so cute cubbard space, especially above the stove area. I like to cook, which involves using spices...a lot of 'em. When ever I try to pick out a specific bottle of whatever it is that I'm looking for, I usually end up with an avalanche of stuff falling all over the place..makes things REALLY frustrating. So, I cruised all around Amazon and ended up find this pretty cool spice rack: 

It fits PERFECTLY (thank gawd for accurate measuring) and holds 18 bottles. Not only that, but it holds the drawer when you pull it out, so you don't have to worry about it actually falling out all the way when you're looking for that specific spice because it locks into place. Now that I know it actually fits AND works, I'll be buying a few more so I can organize the rest of my spice cabinets!

Aside from those goodies, I got my handy dandy "Candy Thermometer" that I ordered from Pampered Chef. 'Tis the season for candies, and when it comes to making a specific kind of fudge..I gotta make sure I'm hitting the right temperature for it:

Last but not least, there was a "scooper" I found while I was shopping around Carmel, California. As I plugged around this amazing store (seriously, it's like Toys R Us for cooks!), I came across this Texas size scooper. In the picture, the one on the left is the Texas sized one while the scoop on the right is Pampered Chefs largest model:

"Gluttony" sized, is how I refer to it. 

SO, there ya have it! Merry EARLY Christmas to meeeee!!!! YIPPPPPYYYY!!!

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Nerdtastically Apocalyptic Christmas

As I was editing the pictures for this blog, I came to terms with how nerdy my family really is.

Last year, I got Eric a Kindle from Amazon.com and he LOVES it. Comes in handy because he's very into reading and it cuts down on him having te physical book. I know you're probably thinking "Why does it matter if he has the physical book?"...well, since we're military peeps, whenever we move, we have a weight limit. When it was time for us to move here, ALOT of the weight was due to books between mine and Eric's collection (mainly his), in which we ended up putting the majority in storage. Since we've been her, Eric has slowly started collecting even more books.. so,the Kindle has put a stop to that.

Now John has the reading bug. Le sigh. It's fabulous that he's into reading and expanding his imagination....I'm all for it! I'm just not up for the hoards of books that are starting to pile up. So, Eric and I did some talking and we figured out that we should get John a Kindle for Christmas. He'd definitely benefit from it considering he blows through books pretty fast, not to mention, most of the books he ends up wanting have to be ordered online since the bookstore we normally haunt at the "local" base doesn't have the best selection.

We ended up getting him the Wi-Fi capible Kindle ( the one for $139 ) in Graphite. So, he should be able to download books freely at home with the gift card we got him, without assaulting our Amazon account.

Funny thing is, I guess before Eric and I decided on getting him the Kindle, Eric actually ordered a few books for him. So, it looked rather silly that John opened up actual books, then he gets an electronic book reader, lol. Oh well...I guess he'll be able to take the books with him to school and such since he won't be allowed to take the Kindle with him. In addition to the Kindle, I ended up getting him a pretty cool little case for it in his favorite color, which is red.

Eric is insanely hard to shop for, aside from the German pottery we just picked up from him. Most of the time with any guy, you can buy them tools, video games, movies, or whatever makes 'em tick and they'd be a happy camper. It doesn't work like that with my husband. He has this knack of buying himself stuff when he wants it (within reason) to where it doesn't really leave anything left to get as a gift. This happens during our anniversary, his birthday and Christmas. VERY frustrating! So, his coworkers helped me out and kept their ears open in case he mentioned anything at work in terms of what he'd be interested for Christmas. Turns out, he was really wanting to get "The Walking Dead" comic book series, which is what the TV show was based off of. After doing a little bit of research, I found the whole collection and they got here in time:

The Compendium One has the first eight comic books in it, a lovely total of 1,044 pages of cartoons. Then I managed to get editions nine through thirteen individually since they weren't conveniently bundled in a Compendium Two or anything.



Last but not least, there's me. Eric got me a white Kindle 3G with Wi-Fi :) It's still in the mail, but at least I know it's on it's way here!

A pretty simple Christmas, but it works for us.

PS: In case you didn't notice...it seems like the main theme for this years Christmas gifts were zombies / apocalyptic scenarios and electronics. Go figure!

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