My wife and I have camped years of our lives due to the type of work we used to do and still do sometimes. It was often backpacking. It took us far too long to discover that really high end sleeping bags like western mountaineering or feathered friends are worth the extra money. There's not so many diminishing returns on those. If you're not going to go a lot, just buy any named brand used down bag on ebay, wash it in a rotating washer with the special soap, and then dry it with no heat with a dryer with lots of tennis balls. That will take like 12 hours, so yeah, make some time for it. You'd be amazed at the crappy matted down stuff I've gotten at thrift stores and turned into like new.
For a pad, I still like an orange thermarest the best. The others are too slippery and I wake up on the ground. But they hurt my back now. However, I just bought a nemo tensor. I'm going to try spraying it with thinned down silicone through a paint gun and see how I like it. That's the main pad that a lot of of folks I know use now if you want to know what the "best" is consensus wise now.
