A Stainless Steel Marriage

Ooooo, my preeeccioousss

Recently I talked about my seventh wedding anniversary. To celebrate, Princess Daddy and I went to dinner downtown and then to a Bruno Mars concert. It was romantic and sexy and awesome. It was a great way to spend an adult evening out.

For our anniversary, there were no flowers. There were no diamonds. There wasn’t even a card. We aren’t into that kind of stuff. We rarely buy gifts for each other.

Example: Two years ago, we bought a dishwasher for our anniversary. We don’t even remember going out to dinner. Just a dishwasher. (But let me tell you just how awesome that dishwasher is. We didn’t have one at all before. We hand washed everything. The doctor said “twins” and both of us immediately thought of a dishwasher. Ha. We are a match made in heaven.)

So this year, it should be no surprise that our anniversary gift to each other was… New pots and pans!

Let’s go back to the beginning. We married young, lived in a one bedroom apartment and skimped on whatever possible. We had very few nice things, a lot of what we owned came from second-hand stores. We shopped clearance racks and sales, only bought generic, etc. Our furniture came from Wal-Mart and was made from particle board. We each made I think $9/hour at our jobs. We were happy though and very much in love.

We’ve never needed fancy things. For us it’s always been about experiences over things. We saved up our money to be able to go on vacations and travel instead of get fancier dishes and silverware.

Life now though? It’s like we paid our dues. We definitely make more that $9 an hour. We still save for vacations. We are known to take very impromptu trips wherever we want. Since I make my own schedule and he has very flexible hours, we can do this. But more importantly, we are finally to a point where we are trading in our old and battered things for a bit more glam. We almost always live below our means and I think that really helps us stay financially secure. It is nice to feel a little spoiled sometimes though.

So yes, we bought pots and pans. They are stainless steel with a copper ring bottom. They are fabulous. Our old set was a Christmas gift 8 years ago, the $30 set at Wal-Mart. The Teflon was broken up and often got scraped into our food. They definitely needed to go. Did we have to go top of the line? No. (But we saved over $100 on the purchase with sales and coupons so it was hard to resist.) Could we have gotten a new set of the Wal-Mart special? Yes. We aren’t above them.

But you know, we are moving up in the world, one basket steamer at a time.