Showing the Love

Sure, it may be someone's birthday, and we will celebrate that to the extreme, but right now I am going to show some love for stuff, not people.

#1

I married someone who hangs up all of their shirts. All of them. The assimilating type, I now do the same. For one thing, my knits don't get wrinkled anymore. In addition, things don't really get lost in a dark drawer. That brings me to my LOVE of these velvet hangers. Try them! Even the slinkiest of tank tops will not slide off. I bought a pack of 20 a while back, but then I was at Freddies, and I found this pack of 40 on clearance for $7. 

#2

Who goes out for coffee? Not us! We got this little espresso maker in Italy and have been rocking it every day (two or three times a day) since then. This one is COOP (the co-op grocery giant there), but we've used a Bialetti, too. 

#3 

I love New Seasons! We buy almost all of our groceries there. When people boo-hoo and say it's too expensive, it's probably because they're buying delicious food like this foccacia. I think this is probably $4 or $5, but it's soooo good! Note: We usually just buy ingredients to make food, not already prepared food. And, yes, that includes bread. I like to pretend I was never a baker and am off the hook from bread making, just like I am off the hook for laundry!

Gotta jet and eat some b-day cake. Maybe I'll add onto this lame list soon.

A New Low

Who cares if we owned a coffeeshop for 10 years? Who cares if that was back when Stumptown did a secret spy mission to check out your shop before they'd let you sell their coffee? That's so five years ago!

Okay. I've finally done something I never thought I would; I bought food at Ross. That's right, Ross.

Exhibit A:

Need a closer look at the price tag on this 2.5# bag of beans? Yeah. $14.99. Tried to pull off the price tag in shame, but then I decided to own this awesomeness!

I'm pretty sure Stumptown Hairbender Blend is $18 a pound, but saving money didn't taste so bad.

And just like all shopping trips where I score, I tried to go back and do it again, only to fail. I bought some Seattle's Best, and it was (is) even worse than 'Bucky's. Did you know Starbucks owns Seattle's Best? Well, there's a reason why Seattle's Best is served at McDonalds- because it sucks!

book project

I read The Neddiad and baked a cake about it. It's a turtle, and the cake was good.

Trebuchet

Putting together a trebuchet is fun.

Pancakes!

Waiting for a Snow Day

Hope the chickens are cozy in the coop!

Toaster Storage

Do you keep your toaster on the counter? I mean, does it live on your counter?

I remember my sister telling me about her friend who stores her toaster in a drawer.  Back then, I thought that was the craziest thing ever. Who does that?!

Well, I never thought I'd be this way, but...our toaster lives in the cabinet. We drag it out when we use it, and we put it away after it cools down. There are three reasons (listed in order of importance):

1. A toaster takes up too much space.

2. Toasters in regular use are unattractive and, in our case, ugly.

3. The kitchen looks cleaner without our toaster on display.

That countertop is made from a real bowling alley. Back when we had our coffeeshop (we sold it), we found out our landlords had a cache of discarded bowling alley in storage. They converted the bowling alley into a bar (which was reasonable because there are tons of bowling alleys), and they had the intelligence to save the bowling alley lanes/wood/planks. We traded food and coffee for enough to redo our kitchen and two others! Pretty cool.