Spoon Me

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Norther California, to be precise), my mother and I went to the Mikasa outlet in the town next to ours and bought brand new flatware for my wedding.  She was way more excited about this than I was, because she was older and wiser and knew what's what.  Not that I wasn't appreciative - I was really grateful!  But I was also young, childless, getting married in a month, and in the midst of my final semester of college. Flatware wasn't really on my radar.

Fast forward fourteen and a half years, and flatware was finally on my radar. The Mikasa stuff had held up well, but it was starting to really show its age.  Actually, it started to show its age about a year ago, but I ignored it until last week when I found a set on Crate&Barrel's website that I actually liked that was also on sale! Score!

The flatware came today, but I didn't have a chance to open it until right before dinner. I tore open the packaging, snapped a quick picture for social media (because, priorities), and then put it all in the sink so I could wash it before we ate. I remember thinking it seemed like a lot of pieces at the time, but quickly got distracted by something else.

After dinner I started loading it into the drawer. Umm... there was a lot. (It's also way prettier than it looks here. It's a timeless, pretty pattern that I really like. And it's heavy and sturdy and just feels good to hold, which counts for a lot, I think.)  ((See?  Flatware matters to me now.))

After mulling over it for a while, and after quite a bit of teasing from Lance about how silverware obviously confuses me, and kids, don't bother your mother while she's counting the silverware because we all know she has problems with that... haha. Anywho, I remembered that while I originally thought I ordered a place setting of 12, I actually ordered a place setting of 18. There were 8 place settings in each box, but I really only wanted 12 so I thought I would just order 4 more of each piece, but then realized it wasn't that much more to just order another box.  So I did.  But then for some reason I ordered 2 more of each piece; I'm not sure why, but it was a Sunday afternoon and I was dealing with Tess, so we'll just blame her.

The thing is, I had way, WAY, WAY more than just 18 teaspoons. I counted them all out again and I had 34!  THIRTY-FOUR!!  Lance teased me some more, but seriously, I KNOW I didn't order 16 extra spoons! (He was secretly happy, though. We're always running out of clean teaspoons, which makes for sad cereal mornings.)

The thing is, I had already taken them all out of their packaging and washed them, so I was pretty sure Crate&Barrel wouldn't want them back. But I felt guilty because I didn't pay for them.  So I got online and chatted with a super friendly Crate&Barrel associate.  She kept thanking me for my honesty, which was nice, but she also kind of freaked out when I told her the total number of extra spoons.  Not freaked out in a bad way, but in a way that I could tell she found this all really amusing. (I like to think of her chatting with her friends in the break room about this crazy spoon chat she had to deal with.)

Long story short, Crate&Barrel sincerely thanked me for letting them know what happened (inventory reasons), but they were more than happy to let me just keep the spoons.

I think it's safe to say we will probably never run out of clean cereal spoons again!