Duvet covers

My husband and I enjoy shopping together. Let me clarify that. I enjoy shopping, and my husband has learned to think of shopping as a social opportunity; time with Christy! Last week I had $10 Kohl's cash. Those of you that shop at Kohl's know that Kohl's cash expires. It's a gimmick, you see, to get you back into the store to spend more money...AND it works. You bet I'm going to spend my Kohl's cash; afterall, I earned it, right? By spending money at Kohl's in the first place. I will tell you that I love a good deal and shop very carefully.

The difficult part about this trip is that there was nothing in particular that I was shopping for. I often use my Kohl's cash on shoes or clearance clothing for the kids to grow into. This means it took a little more time than usual to spend my whopping $10. I did find a wallet that I really like, but Matt and I decided to look around to see what else we could find. In our passing conversation, Matt mentioned that he's tired of our bedspread. It snags easily so there are snags all over it. I've been feeling the same way, but hadn't even thought about replacing it. After Matt's suggestion, we headed to the bedding section. I made sure to tell him that bedding here is VERY expensive. But it would certainly be fun to look around and see what they have.

After talking about a couple different bed spreads, we came across one that we both seemed to like. It was in the color scheme we already have set up for our bedroom so it would be easy to replace what we have with this one. About that time, Matt takes off his vibram, which has velcro on it and begins dragging it on the beautiful bedspread. My brain registers what he is doing and I quietly yell (if that's possible), "No, don't....." but it was too late. Matt was trying to see if the velcro would snag the bed spread and it DIDN'T! I was relieved and he was excited, "This one passes the test," he said as he put his shoe back on. Then we looked at the price. The set was on sale for $143 or something like that. OUCH! That's a lot of money. A lady nearby commented to us that she has had this bed spread for a couple years and it hasn't snagged at all and maybe we should look at getting a duvet cover instead of the set. Afterall, we already have matching pillows at home. Matt says, "What's a duvet cover?" In case you don't know, you put your old blanket into the cover, just like a pillow sham. So Matt's definition of a duvet is a great big sham! LOL!

Then the problem was, what size is our blanket at home? Is it queen size like the bed? Or did I buy a king size set last time? I was doubting that, but we came to the conclusion to buy both sizes and return the other. Brilliant! Regular price for the duvet cover was $180 for the queen and $20 more than that for the king. But of course they were on sale, on clearance in fact for 60% off, making the queen size duvet $72. At the register I used my Kohl's cash AND my 20% off coupon that came in my email. Woohoo! My total for both duvets was less than $100, which means when I return the king size, my duvet cost me less than $50!!!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled to pieces. I never would have thought to shop for a new bed spread, let alone a duvet cover and we found one that is really high quality for a decent price. Yahoo! Now to get that other duvet cover back to the store.

By the way, it is really easy to put your duvet cover on your old blanket with TWO people! Luckily I had Matt around and I didn't have to do it the hard way.

In Review: Salsa Leedo's Mexican Grill

My favorite Mexican Restaurant has closed. For some reason this seems to happen on a regular basis. I'd love to hear if any of you have a favorite Mexican Restaurant still in business that you could refer me to! In the meantime, I found a coupon in our local circular for Buy one Entre get one Entre 50% off. That works for me! So Matt and I decided to have a lunch date. I love that Matt works from home relatively often, allowing us to have lunch dates!

The restaurant is pretty big. This particular building used to be an Italian restaurant owned by the same local whose Mexican restaurant recently went under. :'-( I'd never been to that restaurant so I don't know how it was set up; however, I LOVE the ambience they've created in Salsa Leedos Mexican Grill. Other large restaurants I've been in that don't have walls built up everywhere become very loud when the restaurant is busy. This drives me nuts! I don't want to feel like I'm having my meal during a clown party. This restaurant has lots of walls and nooks built in, breaking up areas for privacy. The extra walls everywhere really help reduce the noise level during the lunch rush. Matt and I were seated in a back area where there were only two other tables nearby. It was wonderful! The other thing I noticed are the awesome colors on the walls. Being a Mexican restaurant, they have a lot of bright colors that look good together! Something else I noticed is they have a large party table.

Now for the menu. A friend of mine warned me that their food used to be amazing, but the last couples times they've eaten here is was just okay. With a coupon in hand, I was still willing to give it a try. For Matt, the Carne Esada (if the restaurant makes it at all) is the tell for how good the restaurant is. For me, it's the fajitas. If the fajitas aren't great, it's just an okay restaurant at best. So...Matt order his usual Carne Esada burrito and I ordered the mixed fajita platter with beef and chicken. First thing I noticed is their prices are higher than most other Mexican restaurants. Quite frankly, that sucks. Apparently there's a price for the ambience. The other thing I noticed right away was that the service was awesome. Diana was our server and she did a great job to check on us regularly, but not be there too much or too little. Woohoo! As it turned out, we ordered our drinks and our meals at the same time, since we knew what we wanted.

Just like all other Mexican restaurants, we were provided with freshly made chips and salsa. They were good, but not great. As we were running low, our server Diana, offered us more, so we asked for pico de gallo instead of the regular salsa. We were quite surprised to find the pico de gallo was very large chunks. I love chunky salsa, but this was a bit over the top in my opinion. Maybe somebody was trying to save time. Who knows? We decided to mix the salsa with the pico de gallo and it was pretty darn good; however, there was occasionally an extra spicy bite since the chunks of jalapeno were bigger than I would have liked.

Our meals came basically right after our chips were gone. I could hear my fajitas coming! I love how they sizzle! My hot platter was clear full and my plate of extras was huge! It felt like my food took up half the table. I told Matt, "Next time we can share an order of fajitas." Normally I use the plate and mix everything up into a big fajita salad and not even use the tortillas. Yes, already know I'm weird. But today I knew I couldn't eat nearly half of what they served me, so I decided to stick to the small tortillas. Everything looked so good!

Matt was taking his first bites while I was stacking my tortilla with food. He began singing his praises of the carne esada. Hurray! This was great news. Especially since the burrito was $11. Matt liked that the burrito was not full of beans and rice. It was meat, onions, green peppers, and cheese. About this time I finally started to eat my fajitas. First couple bites were okay, but nothing to write home about. There was a couple flavors I couldn't figure out that didn't taste right. I mentioned it to Matt and continued to eat. After my first tortilla I was full. Funny part is I'd only put a dent in my meal. When Matt finished his burrito I offered him some of mine and he tried it happily. His assessment was that they used curry on the meat. No wonder why I wasn't thrilled with it. I'm not a curry fan. He also mentioned that something tasted like pumpkin. That would be the zucchini and squash in the stir fry. Matt's comment was, "Indian food and Mexican food don't mix. You don't see Indians mixing curry with beef, Mexicans shouldn't, either." That pretty much sums it up. While the presentation was beautiful, I was disappointed in my fajitas.

Since the carne esada was a hit, I'm betting we'll return again for another date or two. Although I did not try it, the server said they do have fried ice cream, which is a favorite of mine! Next time we go, I'll have to try something else on the menu in hopes they don't use curry on everything. Matt rated his meal an 8 out of 10. I'd probably rate my meal a 3 out of 10.

In the meantime, what is your favorite restaurant? I miss my old favorite dive. *heavy sigh*