Matt's Birthday

Our tradition in the past couple of years has been for the person with the birthday to decide what they want, and then the other person gets it for them. This takes the stress out of present shopping and helps to limit the amount of $$ we waste on each other.

This year, Matt thought and thought and thought about what he wanted for his birthday. My mom got him a very fun "grill master" apron, which he promptly put to good use. But he could not think of anything that he wanted me to spend money on. What he did have was a good idea...

Matt has been getting very frustrated lately with his spices. In particular, finding the right spice when it is needed seems impossible, and purchasing duplicate items is a relatively common occurrance. So, Matt asked that for his birthday, I organize his food/spice cabinets. There was a twist on this request, but I'll keep that between Matt and me. :-)

And the result? We now have a shelves for all drink related items (hot cocoa, tea, coffee, lemonade, etc.), sweet baking items, other baking items (crisco, cornmeal, baking soda/powder), flour items, noodles/rice, meat rubs/seasonings (thanks Allison and Elizabeth!), and the elusive spices.

Most of the stuff is just now a little easier to locate due to the categorization system, but most of all, we are happy about how the spices turned out. We made an after dinner trip to the store to pick up a lazy susan and a tiered spice shelf, both of which make our spices much easier to locate. Don't you agree?

Yay for a productive evening, and yay for Matt's birthday! Now we are off to celebrate a little more before bed. Goodnight, everyone!