Saturday morning...this was better than my coffee.

There are a few people that I need to credit with the highlight of my weekend...

Ok, so we went out on Friday night with neighbors and went to the MOA today with the boys, both of which were super fun too...but what was less exhausting yet slightly more expensive, was our new POT RACK!!

Andy and I have been talking about buying one of these for awhile. We had a small one, that was just a single length 3-4 ft long hanger, in our townhouse years ago, but the only place to hang it was on the outside of the cabinets that divided our kitchen and dining room...and the back of the cabinets was technically our dining room. Quite the way to decorate.

That one didn't work in our current house, especially after the greatest idea ever (knocking out the wall between the kitchen and previous living room/new dining room) resulted in everything being moved around in our kitchen. So...this has been our pot/pan solution for awhile now. I swear I actually cook less than I would otherwise just to avoid the hassle of moving this pan and that pot off the pan/pot I need to take out, and then putting this pan and that pot back in the closet. Ugh. Plus, moving pots and pans around is loud...and after 6 or so, when D & Owen go to bed, we can't be that clangy in our house. We eat a lot of frozen pizzas. And now my excuse is gone.

This isn't even full!

We shopped around a lot online. Sticker shock.

And then...a certain family member (I don't want to out them...employee discount is a sacred thing that is shared sparingly!!) started working at a certain retailer (They once shipped me my order of children's cooking utensils...and a wine cooler. Now, I want a wine cooler as much as the next person...but I called THREE times to get them to come pick up this item that, from reading the shipping information, appeared to be a WEDDING gift for someone else. I just couldn't live with myself if I'd kept it. But I was kinda secretly wishing they wouldn't have come to pick it up after the third time I called...I'm sure the person in California was thankful I have a conscience...I digress...) and the solution arose.

Mind you, it still wasn't cheap...but paired with self-installment (thank goodness my husband and his dad are so capable...it took them under 2 hours!!...what do other people do?!), and it was about as good as you could get. I can't stop staring at it.

First step...find the trusses (that's what they're called, right?).
I love that Dylan is in this picture...he's like, "When do I get to be like Daddy and Grampa?"

Andy considered climbing through the crawl-space, through all of the insulation to find the trusses, but then they came up with this solution...measure and make your best guess, and then drill and stick flags through the ceiling...they are SO clever! Seriously, how does your average person install this stuff? The Sandberg men have years of experience! There was hardly any swearing and I was so impressed!!

The drills were made and they hit on every spot. Time to commit to the location and hang it up!

We decided to get the low profile pot rack because we didn't want it blocking our view across the island it hangs over...or want any of our monkey-children grabbing hold and swinging around. It works...on my tippy-toes I can reach everything that we hung up.

Here's a pic with a few things hung up. Now that everything is visible, I'm so glad we took a hit to our checking account years ago when we got the All-Clad pots and pans. But I really need to scrub these babies up!

And now I'm left with this. And I said to myself, could it be? An empty shelf in my kitchen?! I'm sure it will fill up fast.
(I like to sneak movie quotes into my blog posts...anybody catch it?)

One of my favorite snaps from the day...Mr D and his Grampa Pete