All-Clad LTD2

I'm so excited! On December 9th I finally got my new pots and pans from Williams-Sonoma - with many thanks to our wedding and shower gift cards! I've had my eyes on these beautiful pots and pans since they first came out (about a year ago) and finally they are mine (and Dan's).

I chose the All-Clad LTD2 10-piece set. It was the perfect size for us. This is what we got in our set...

The 10-Piece Set Includes:
10" and 12" fry pans.
2-qt. and 4-qt. saucepans with lids.
4-qt. sauté pan with lid.
8-qt. stockpot with lid.

In case you noticed, there is one extra piece in the photo. I got a free All-Clad 10" Non-Stick Fry Pan a while ago, but since I never used it Dan added it to the other new pots and pans.

Early Bird Special and Thanksgiving 2009

I just realized that I never wrote about my family's Early Bird Special! Okay, allow me to explain... since Kathleen was planning to spend Thanksgiving in Minnesota with her boyfriend [Brad] and his family, we had an "Early Bird Special" when they came in for a visit two weeks before Thanksgiving (11/14/09). Brad was the one who gave our special turkey day the clever title. The whole day was just like Thanksgiving! Dinner was at my parents house and we had our usual Thanksgiving spread with my dad's side of the family. The only things that were missing were the parades on TV and the Black Friday sale ads - which we replaced with just plain sale ads.
Since it was such a beautiful day outside, the boys played bean bags... a lot! As long as there was daylight they played. By nightfall most of them were pretty sore from throwing bean bags all day.

Once it was too dark to play bean bags we all played What Were You Thinking - a Thanksgiving family tradition. It was a blast! We had a lot of good laughs and, as usual, some unusual answers.

Even though we had a full Thanksgiving spread on the 14th, we still celebrated Thanksgiving at the other Kovals home on Thanksgiving day. We had another glorious meal and afterwords we sat around the table with the real Black Friday ads - another family tradition.

Once Dan and I got home we started decorating our apartment for our first Christmas as husband and wife! It was tricky rearranging our living room to fit the Christmas tree, but we managed. Our apartment looks amazing! Very festive! Thank you to my parents for letting us use their extra tree and a lot of other extra Christmas decorations!

Dan and I didn't do too much Black Friday shopping, but we did get up at 6:30 a.m. to do a little early bird shopping. We got just about everything that we had on our lists. Later that day I did the Gollwitzer family photo shoot and then I had to work at Williams-Sonoma. It was a loooong day for me.