Christmas Come Early

For those of you who haven't yet seen Carl's Facebook status, today was a very exciting day for me. Bed Bath and Beyond has an event for their registrants where they offer a 20% discount on all the items you didn't receive, as well as anything else in the store. It's pure genius! All of us brides stampeded through the store foaming at the mouth and ready to do some serious spending on household items. For the past year or so I've been contemplating getting a high-end blender, but every time I started to save for it something else would come up and the blender would get put on the back burner for another couple of months. When I found out about the BB&B event I decided that it was time to go for it. A 20% discount is huge, and I probably won't be able to get such a good price, well... ever. I've heard great things about Vitamix and Blendtec, so it was a really tough choice for me. After reading through a jungle of research, product comparisons, and consumer reviews I chose the Vitamix and finally got to bring it home tonight. I'm not ashamed to say that I am giddier than a 4-year old on Christmas morning. You might be thinking, "Allison, why in God's name would you spend such a disgusting amount of money on a kitchen appliance?" Good question. Between our gift cards and the aforementioned discount I didn't end up paying too, too much out of pocket. The blender has a 7 year warranty and I read numerous reviews from people who've had theirs for more than double that amount of time without any issue. For the amount of blending I do, that means a lot. I've already used it twice tonight:

Its first green smoothie! I was really impressed with how quickly it blended and how smooth it was.

Homemade salad dressing- Sweet Dijon Vinaigrette

One of my favorite things about it: for cleanup all you have to do is fill it with water and a few drops of dish soap, blend it for a minute and that's it. It's so powerful that it turns it into its own mini-dishwasher! Now I only wish I was hungrier so that I could make more smoothies.