Until two weeks ago, I had two ways of choosing the appliance that was right for our home.  The first (and most important in my book) was the look of the appliance.  Was it aesthetically pleasing and would it match the mood of the room along with the other appliances?

The second factor for me in choosing an appliance was the price.  My contractor husband is always on the look out for “out of the box” deals at our local Home Depot and Lowes. We were told not too long ago by an appliance repair man that the life span of today’s appliances is five years.  He said, “In my opinion, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on an appliance, it will last about five years.”  To be perfectly honest, that has been our experience to a tee.  In fact, one of the things that bothers me the most about appliances that need repair work after five years is that,  it is cheaper to buy a new appliance than it is to repair the old.  Recently our dishwasher went up and I was just sick about what we were doing to our landfills.  Where do all the broken ones go?  Because my husband is in the business, we donated it to a friend who repairs appliances.  He’ll use the parts.

When GE invited Chris Ann and I down to Louisville, Kentucky to visit them at the GE Monogram Experience Center, I came armed with some of these concerns and questions.  GE not only addressed them, but gave us such a wonderful, “appliance-educational” experience, I left there a better and more discerning consumer.

From the moment we arrived, GE Appliances rolled out the red carpet and ushered us into a world full of modern day solutions.  We spent about two hours in each appliance’s home.  The range, the refrigerator, the dishwasher and the washer and dryer each had their own showroom equipped with experts ready to share and listen.

They wanted to hear from us, moms.  After all, we are the ones who know the purring sound each of our appliances makes and are the first to hone in on a problem.  We stock our refrigerators, make our meals, clean our dishes and do endless loads of laundry.  I think between Chris Ann and I we do about 20 loads (if not more) a week!

When we met with the experts, they had questions for us.  What would help make entertaining easier?  What features do you like in your dishwasher?  They even wanted to know our laundry confessional.

With each concern, they pointed to the appliance or feature that would take care of that.  For example, one of the main concerns of the “soccer moms” in attendance, was the need for a speedy meal.  Aside from installing an oven in our mini vans, how can we prepare a meal quickly for our families?  They introduced us to the Advantium Oven.

Have you ever heard of it?  Neither had we.  It can cook a 5 lb. chicken in as little as 33 minutes. It’s like a convection oven, meets microwave on steroids.  Seriously, it takes a lot to impress these mamas of 9, but we were impressed.

GE’s appliances are loaded with feature after feature to help make our lives easier.  They have a washer and dryer where you can digitally enter in “grass stain” or “sweat stains” and the washer will do what it needs to to get the job done.

One of the demonstrations I appreciated the most was the GE induction range.

I’ve seen them on TV.  The chef puts the magnetic pot on the burner and within minutes the water is boiling.  By the time the pot comes off the burner, the chef can touch the surface and not burn himself.  Clean up on these babies is a breeze as well.

When the tables were turned and they asked us to share some of our concerns, I asked about the longevity of appliances today.  They seemed shocked that word on the street is appliances have a “five year life”.  Now, they couldn’t give me a definitive answer on how long their appliances last.  They did say that all their appliances come with a 1 year warranty.  I have to say, it wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for.  But, to address recycling questions, they are working hand in hand with Home Depot and Lowes to recycle the old appliances…and even old light bulbs! I’d say that’s progress.

They surprised us with the opportunity to a GE Range in the Monogram Experience Center’s professional kitchen with chefs Joe Castro and Brian Logsdon.

We had a blast preparing this breaded chicken dish.  It was beautiful and delish!

There are so many things to think about when it comes to choosing an appliance for your home.  Most of the bloggers in attendance realized we didn’t even know what questions to ask.

The GE team lives, breathes and studies all aspects of the appliance, from a producers view point.  We live, breath and use our appliances as consumers.  I think putting the two “experts” together, gave us both a new way of looking at how our appliance can serve us.  I walked away much more knowledgeable about what questions to ask when choosing our next appliance.  For sure, I will go with my husband and not let him settle for the “out of the box” cheaper model.  Having interacted with the GE appliances, especially the GE Monogram line, they feel sturdier, better designed and well thought out…not to mention, there were plenty that fit my “aesthetically pleasing” standard.

*We were invited to Louisville, Kentucky by GE Appliances for the GE Momsperience weekend.  All of our expenses were paid by GE.  But, there was no requirement for us to write this post, review or any recap.  We wanted to share with you our personal experience.  The opinions are all our own.

We’re sharing recipes good for a long weekend today at LoveFeast Table!

This salad and dressing are delish.  Devon, Kristin’s husband whipped it up for our first Minnesota  BlogLove™ event “Europen Marketplace” and it was received with raving reviews!

LoveFeast’s own Spanish Chicken Ceasar  Salad

The LoveFeast Table tradition when we are visiting each other is to mix together a pitcher or in this case a bucket of homemade Sangria.

“Tim the Toolman” Sangria

This is  a great side dish to bring along to a party or a picnic.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad

Ever since our trip to Italy we have loved Limoncello.  You would be surprised how easily it came up with a fellow passenger on an airplane trip.  After he asked to have my empty mini wine bottle, The Don was sweet to share his method for making Limoncello.

The Don’s Limoncello

We were introduced to this Hot Banana Boat dessert two summers ago.  It is the perfect campfire treat.   We have  just one stipulation.  You have to get a professional hand model.  Just sayin’.  You’ve been warned.

Hot Banana Boat Dessert

We’d love if you would share your Memorial Day Weekend traditions and recipe ideas with us at the table!  To find the directions to LoveFeast’s Fancy Friday click here!  We’d love you to grab a button and join our link up party!

Some of you know, we have been in an 8 month process of redefining our look for LoveFeast Table.  You see, when we started blogging 2 1/2 years ago, we thought we were going to write a cookbook.  That’s what started us on this blogging journey.  We had shared so many amazing meals around the table (over the 14 years we had been friends along with our growing families), we thought we wanted to document them.  We wanted to share not only the original recipes, but also capture the conversations that took place as well as the environment and overall feel that were part of the meal.  We looked at font after font that captured our feel and Kristin sketched it out.  We put a frame around it, because it was part of our story, and created our original logo:

We also picked a WordPress template (this one) because it was easy on the eyes.  We didn’t know about functionality or finding a site that would help clearly communicate who we were.  To be honest, the start of our blogging journey, was just the beginning of discovering who we were at LoveFeast Table and what we were trying to say.

Over time, we struggled to fit ourselves into a blogging genre.  We started with foodies.  Were we a food blog?  We featured recipes, meals and restaurant reviews.  But, we realized we had more to say.  We were the moms of  9 kids combined.  We had kids aging in range from 16 to 4.  Were we mom bloggers?  What about the part that we were both artists who are absolutely in love with anything that inspires.  We decorate, do projects, craft, paint and just plain love anything beautiful.  Were we home and garden bloggers?  We love throwing a party or creating multi course meals for friends.  Were we event planners?  Should we even be blogging since we love “In Real Life” time more?  Can you see our struggle?  Well, because we are dreamers and firmly believe in not boxing ourselves in, we decided we were all the above.  But, somehow, we realized, we needed to be able to better communicate that to you.

Fast forward to today.  We are working on a blog redesign that will clearly define who we are as a Lifestyle blog.  We are getting a new look.  Here’s a peek:

We have five categories we will be blogging under:

LOVE…This will include things we love…art, music, tablescaping, design, fashion, crafting projects, decor, Fancy Friday and bits & baubles.

FEAST…This includes meals, recipes, restaurant reviews, food toys and anything involving the art of eating.

TABLE…This is where we have a conversation.  We will feature guests that join us, interviews, stories about our friends, our journey and our community.

LIFE…This is about the experience.  Things like travel, events we attend, BlogLove Events, Love Bombing and giving back campaigns.

BOUTIQUE…This is our shop.  This shop will be filled with items we discover on our journey.  They are hand picked items that reflect our authentic journey.  These items will be featured in our shop as we discover them.  There may be a limited number of them or they may find a permanent place in our Boutique.  But, we promise they will be beautiful!

Some of you may have stopped over from Pioneer Woman’s site today.  Thank you for pulling up a chair and getting to know a little about us.  We hope you’ll come back again.  We love meeting new people!  If you want to connect a bit more and walk along side us on this journey, you can find us on twitter @LoveFeast, on facebook HERE and of course you can sign up for our RSS feed.

If you’ve come because you just love that necklace, you can click on SHOP or the necklace button on the side and you will be directed to our Boutique.  We love this necklace and know you will too!

Thanks for joining us at the Table!

Chris Ann & Kristin

Chris Ann and family arrived in Baltimore!  After a quick toast with sangria, we had to run to a little league game.  Ok…we continued the “toast” with a small pitcher that we smuggled to the baseball field.  Over a bit more sangria, we decide to start our feasting with a bushel of steamed crabs.

The kids spread out the newspaper and within minutes of arriving back at the house, the festivities began!  There’s no better way to linger and catch up than over a pile of steamed Maryland crabs.  We’ll let the pictures tell the story.