My Indulgent Weekend

This weekend was one of indulgences.  Not spa treatments or physical pampering; that’s not my kind of indulgence.  Rather, this weekend I decided to treat myself to some things that I have wanted for a long time but put off for one reason or another.  

On Saturday, we headed into the suburbs to pick up some tile for a bathroom repair.  It turned out that I had been misinformed and the tile was NOT in stock at that store after all and, in fact, isn’t even manufactured anymore.  That was not a good start to the weekend of indulgences, but after that everything went smoothly.

We headed back west toward home and stopped in at Ikea.  If you’ve ever been to Ikea, you know that you rarely get in and out quickly, so by the time we left, I was ravenous for lunch.  Where to go?  We decided to try somewhere new.  I had always wanted to try Joe’s Crab Shack, but we just never had.  Oh. My. God.  A bucket of snow crab legs and melted butter.  Can I get any closer to paradise? 

This photo is from the Joe's Crab Shack web page.  I was too eager to dig in to think of taking a picture of my meal.  My bucket of crab legs was not as photogenic as this, but it was awfully tasty.

After the feast we stopped at The Container Store to look for spice jars.  None of the spice jars suited, but I found some fabulous metal scoops.  I’ve wanted substantial metal scoops for a while.  All in anticipation of getting a new set of wide-mouth canisters.  I love these scoops.

So now I had the scoops.  But I still had the same French canning jar canisters that I’ve always had.  Jars which are too narrow for scoops.  These are the only canisters I had ever owned.  For quite some time, though, I’d been coveting straight-sided, lidded glass jars from Crate and Barrel, but always worried about their lack of a rubber seal.  I finally decided, what the heck, I want those jars!  So today, I went and got them.  I’m so happy with them.  Easy to pour into, easy to scoop out of.  Love them!

Old canisters                                                                                        New canisters

The final indulgence was the delivery of a shiny new compost pail from Gardener’s Supply.  We have composted for most of the seventeen years we have lived in this house.  We collected our scraps and peels in old coffee cans.  They worked; they were free; they were green.  They were ugly.   Coffee cans filled with orange peels, coffee grounds, and worse (sometimes much worse) were the first thing we would see when we came from the garage onto our little enclosed back porch.  Yuck.  I know the new pail is not really the environmentally friendly way to go, but it makes me happy to see my charming little pail.  The secure lid will also help keep out the fruit flies as the weather gets warmer.  A winner.

All in all, with my new pail, new canisters, new scoops, and the memory of succulent crab legs, I’m feeling like life around here is pretty luxurious all of a sudden.  As Mae West once said, “I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.”  This was my weekend for giving into temptation.