kitchen harmony

Well, the Oster blender that I've had for a few years now (which is kind of a record in and of itself) died at the end of making a batch of green juice on Saturday morning - I had to finish it off using my Braun immersion blender). I drank the last of that batch this morning for breakfast so I knew that I'd need a new blender for tomorrow. I knew that I had 3 20% off coupons for Bed, Bath & Beyond burning a hole in my coupon folder so I looked online to see what they had to offer me. I found a Krups KB720 1000-Watt 5-Speed Stainless Steel Blender that looked good in both it's stats and in it's reviews on Amazon. Yes, I see that it's cheaper if I got it on Amazon but: 1 - I needed it by tomorrow am and the free shipping would take until Friday, 2 - It's got a large GLASS mixing jar that could easily get broken in shipping, 3 - If I didn't like it I'd have to deal with shipping it back, and 4 - If I had paid for overnight shipping I would have ended up paying more money than buying it locally with a coupon.

So the kids and I headed off to the store and got my new Krups blender, a Farberware 2-qt stainless steel covered sauce pan with a double boiler, a Farberware 3-qt stainless steel covered sauce pan with a steamer insert, a vegetable holder for the grill, and a package of 2 pretty large squirt guns. (As I ALWAYS tell the kids "You can never have too many squirt guns!") The one thing that we didn't leave with was some appliance covers. According to the sales guy "Oh, those are only available online, we don't carry them in the stores." What the ? I've been looking for these things EVERYWHERE for the last year - ever since I bought my new mixer in Feb of 2007 - and NOBODY has them locally. I may be a little too 'normal' for the average person that these stores are targeting but if I was selling small appliances I would certainly sell covers for those small appliances. And I would place them in the SAME AISLE as those small appliances. And people would buy them because they would say "Wow, I would like to keep my new - blender, toaster oven, mixer, coffee maker - clean when I'm not using it so I'll buy one of these now!" It's that easy, just stock them in black and white and put them in the small appliance aisle and I guarantee that they will sell. But NOOOOOOOO! I have to go online and order some and pay shipping AND I have to shop! Have I mentioned recently that I don't really like to shop, even online? But I digress.

We ate out - Asian buffet - and when we got home I set the kids up with the squirt guns to soak themselves before bed. I then unwrapped MY new toys. And low and behold, in my kitchen of gleaming white appliances, the brand new brushed-stainless steel and black Krups blender EXACTLY matches the Oster Convection Toaster Oven that I got in Dec 2006. AND they sit right next to each other on the counter. I took pictures of the happy couple immediately (yes, it doesn't take much to make me giddy) but the battery in the camera was running low so instead of uploading the pictures I'm charging the battery. Once I do the dishes tomorrow I'll take pictures of the whole kitchen since I don't think I've taken any since we got the new dish washer (which, by the way, doesn't do such a great job on the milk jars).

Now to go read the instruction manual tonight before using the blender for the first time tomorrow, 'cause that's the kind of girl I am. Oh, and check out other people's opinions on Amazon of my new pots before I use them.