Hey everyone! Dana here. So Heather and I were talking about one of our shared loves: coffee. *cue floating hearts here* Since we love creating new coffee-based drinks, we've decided to make it a monthly feature! Yay! So expect to see a lot more coffee recipes. :D

I love winter. Not as much as I love fall, but winter does have its own special appeal. For one thing, snow! And you still get to wear boots and chunky sweaters and all that snuggly stuff. Look at these pretty Instagram pictures I got to take the other week!
Don't get too weirded out by the bloody one. It's just pomegranate juice. The photo challenge prompt was "stabby stabby kill kill kill." I think I nailed it. ;) Anyway, much as I love the snow, when it melts, everything gets a bit soggy and grey, so I wanted a warm, happy coffee to contrast the icky atmosphere outside. It helps that I had just done a recipe which required only 2/3 of a can of coconut milk. What to do with the leftovers? I know!

Coco-Mocha

• 1/2 cup coconut milk (light or full fat, your choice)
• 1/2 cup coffee
• 1 packet hot cocoa mix

Shcaff everything into your favorite coffee mug and zap in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, depending on your microwave's power and how hot your coffee starts out (see notes below). Alternatively, you can combine everything in a small saucepan and heat on medium heat until it all comes together, about 10 or 15 minutes.
I also prefer to pour in my hot cocoa mix either before I add any liquid or between liquid additions. I think it just integrates better that way since cocoa mix floats. Have you guys noticed the theme with my background book? It's island-y! I own very few books that take place in tropical locales, but this one is part of one of my favorite series: Septimus Heap.
Right, back to the recipe! So coconut milk has a few quirks that makes it different from working with cow's milk. Firstly, the amount of oil in it. I prefer to use light coconut milk, but even that has a good bit of oil. Or is it fat? What's the difference? Is there one? Anyway, in case you haven't heard, coconuts have a lot of oil in them, and people tend to make a big dang deal about it. I am not the person to address the questions surrounding the health benefits of said oil. Google has lots of different information about that if you're curious.

Moving on, because a single 14-ish oz. can of coconut milk has enough in it for three of this recipe, you want to make sure the oil is pretty evenly distributed between uses and not, say, all in one coffee cup. I mean, you can see from the picture above how much we're dealing with. Before you open the can, you can shake it vigorously--I mean, really vigorously. Shake it like you wish you could do with that insanely irritating person at work. That, or you could just use a spoon or butter knife to break up the solidified layer of oil on top and then stir really good before pouring out your half cup.

Then again, if you're tripling this recipe for the family or brunch guests, the stovetop method might be better. The oil will melt, but it will still float to the top, so be sure to stir before serving. Let's say you're just making the one serving for yourself, though, and you're lazy time-thrifty like me. In that case, the microwave is just plain less work... save for one little thing.

 Have you ever made oatmeal or anything else with starch in the microwave and walked away, only to come back and dangit?! It boiled over, and now you have a mess to clean up. Guh. :/ I feel your pain. So you gotta keep an eye on this baby if you do it in the microwave. Like I said, there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. Please be careful if you use one of those mugs that get really hot in the microwave too. You don't want to have ensured non-boil-over-age just to accidentally burn yourself and possibly make a mess anyway. Why do they even make coffee cups like that? We have the technology! Use it!

So there you have it. A chocolatey, tropical latte to pour some sunlight into your life. Oh, and one more thing. If you're using an extra-large mug (like my snakey one below) and don't increase the cocoa mix accordingly, it's still very nice, just not as rich. In the same way, if you're using a normal sized coffee mug and don't want quite as sweet a drink, only use half the cocoa pack. It's your coffee! Dress it up the way you want! Give this one a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

So Dana wanted to title this post "Blinded by the Light," I just wasn't feeling it even if I did laugh out loud at her song rendition.

Roman blinds from mini-blinds are not new. Not by a long shot and there are a plethora of tutorials out there, so I am not going rehash the steps I took to make these blinds. I am going to offer my tips and tricks because I built my two blinds differently.

I didn't mean to build them differently, it just sort of happened, but I'm getting ahead of myself again because I tried to make roman blinds a few years ago, but I used way to heavy of a cotton duck, and the glue just didn't hold. So in my frustration of that failure, I stowed the other 3 mini-blinds away until last week. The blinds in the living room were starting to fall apart, and I was just a little tired of them so it was time to replace them. A trip to Ikea with Mom a few weeks ago netted me some fun tone on tone wood grain curtains. I was going to line my curtains with some muslin, but I ended up not having enough to do both blinds, so I didn't line these babies because I wanted them done now. Unwavering impatience, remember?

So the two blogs I referenced the most for this project were from Reality Daydream and Honestly WTF. From there I kind of just made adjustments as I needed.

My windows are super tall, coming in at 75.5" long and 32.75" wide. My $4 mini-blinds were 31" wide, so when I cut and hemmed the curtains I made sure that the panel would fit snugly inside my window frame. I added 3" to the width of my windows, and 2" to the length of my windows for the cutting measurements. I decided to utilize the finished hem of the curtain panel for one of my end hems, which why I only added the 2" to the length. On the nonfinished end, I did a double 1" hem. The long edges had a .75" double hem. While I was ironing the hems, I pressed the rest of the curtain because it was really badly creased from the packaging.

So the first blind I did, I followed {mostly} the directions from Reality Daydream. I placed the blinds 8" apart and then had a 3.5" section of curtain that hung down below the end of the blind because my blinds were only 72" long and my window is 75.5" tall. I could've added string to the end of my blinds and lengthened them, but I couldn't be bothered, and having the bit hang down look nice. I did try placing stitch to hold the blinds down, but in the end, glued them down using Beacon's Fabri-Tac.  That glue is no joke. Its like superglue for fabric. It smells terrible but works wonderfully.

So after the curtain had dried overnight, which hindsight it didn't really need, I tackled stringing the blinds, the biggest hurdle was trying to figure out the proper orientation of the top rail. Since my curtain panel was a bit longer than my actual blinds, I didn't glue the last inch or so of the rail to the curtains, so that I could slide the rail into the hanging brackets. I also had a bit of a faff with the turning thing for the blinds. None of the tutorials mentioned removing the turning thing for the blinds. They only mention the lift cords, which while helpful was not helpful. So I ended up placing the top rail with the turning thing and the lift cords at the back of the blind.

For the other blind, I attached the blind skeleton as one step. I didn't restring the blinds, and either way was fine. One way was not better than the other, and luckily placing that top rail was faster, because I'd already figured out how the hanging bracket attached to the blind and so forth.

Hanging up the blinds was super easy and would've been without incident if I hadn't found not one, but two nails in the top casing of my windows, so I did have to adjust my brackets a little, but nothing that was swear-worthy.

I did need to go back and glue a bit of the top of the blind to the top rail, because I left a bit more space than I needed for the hanging brackets but better to much space than too little, and that glue did the job really quick.

After I put in the front stop of the bracket, I arranged the curtain edge over the bracket and along the side of my window.

Then it was time to adjust my folds and raise the blinds to where I wanted them. I don't like to have the windows fully blocked, but there is so much window, and there are 4 of these buggers on the front of the house. I just don't like people being able to see so far into my house, not to mention the house faces southwest, so in the afternoon and evening that sun is brutal. I need to have them low enough to where I feel like our privacy isn't invaded, but the sun can still come through. The nice thing about not lining these blinds is that they diffuse the light rather than block it like the other blinds I had up.



I am so happy with how these blinds turned out. I still have the dining room's windows to do, but sometimes it's better to just tackle a project piecemeal.

Oh, I did want to have a moment of truth here. I had to clear out some bins and things from the living room so that it would be picture worthy, so I piled it up into our dining room. After which I had the great idea to show you the difference in brightness between the two sets of blinds. You can also see how my little office area is set up in the living room. These were taken at the same time, and you can see how dark the dining room is compared to the living room now. I love that I don't need to adjust the blinds or turn on a light to see.



Thank so much for stopping by!

Cheers,

Days before Christmas seems like the best time to undertake a small construction project, doesn't it?

I thought so too! Nevermind that I had 19 people coming to dinner on Christmas Eve. What's a little sawdust, drywall dust, and paint?

This new drop zone had actually been in the plans since Thanksgiving, but I kept getting told that I needed to wait, because there was a couch to get rid of before I could implement my plan. Once that couch was gone though! It took a day or 2 to get the furniture moved and the space for the new drop zone cleared out.

I'm getting ahead of myself, let me tell you how this evolved. I bought an entire set of furniture for the family room after Thanksgiving, which meant that all the furniture that was currently in the family room would need to move downstairs to the basement, which further meant that I needed to get rid of 2 pieces of furniture. Luckily, my dad took the big red couch. The chair still needs to go to the dump. The kids have destroyed it.

So with all of that changing, I started looking at another spot in the house that wasn't working anymore. That spot was the itty bitty coat rack that held their coats and backpacks (sometimes), but more often than not, the chair in the living room would hold the oldest's backpack, the shoes would get thrown somewhere near the sofa table, and the two littles......well their crap just got strewn from the living room towards the kitchen. It drove the hubs and me crazy. So I started coming up with plans for a new and improved drop zone. The original plan was to build lockers over on the wall against the stairs in the living room, but that required work. Not that I'm afraid of work, but it would've had to wait until after the new year, and as my husband so eloquently called my unwavering impatience, it just wasn't gonna happen.

So I started really looking at spots and things we had on hand, and then an idea grew. What if I transformed my little office space into the new drop zone?


My area could move into the living room and we'd just use it as more of a parlor. At least then the room would be seeing regular use!

So now I have the perfect space for the drop zone, but how to implement it? I could still do lockers, but again that meant waiting. No, go. Then I remembered that I built a bench eons ago, and it was going to be homeless when the new furniture came in. Why not use it? It was a custom built bench to go over the laundry baskets we used as toy bins when the boys were small. It'd certainly work for a bench to put on shoes and house shoe baskets.

So I moved it and the memo board over to the new spot. Small Fry approves of this!  He and Baby Girl immediately jumped on the shoe basket idea, and it's been so great not tripping over their shoes. Big Guy took a little longer to come around, actually, we still have to remind him to put his shoes away.

I am loving this change so far, and it's not even done!

Next, I had to make sure I had the lumber. We've got loads of scraps in the garage from various projects, so I was fairly certain that I could find everything I needed, and I was right. I managed to scrounge together all the wood I would need for the wall. I even found the builder's paint!

I called my dad and asked him if he wanted to take a break from painting his basement to help me build some wainscotting for the area. I also told him I'd pay him by providing lunch and coffee. He's cheap, but good labor.

I drew up some cursory pictures, and texted them over to him, explaining what exactly I wanted. We went back and forth a bit over what he would bring over and what I had. In the end, the plans were set! He would come over the next day and build me the wall I wanted. Squeeeee!

Construction went exactly as you figured it would. It was a straightforward plan with nothing to really complicate it, except or the dang outlet. Oh well. The outlet is behind the bench so ending the wood a bit above it worked out well.


The only real hitch came when I was touch up the wall where the hallway color is. My sample can was a different shade completely! So I went back to Lowe's and discovered that they'd changed the name of the paint I had used (it's now called Wild Mushroom), but if I had the code then they could mix it up. Of course, I don't remember the code, that's why I remembered the name! Google search to the rescue! The paint is still a shade darker, but to be fair this paint has been on the wall for ~5 years, so some lightening is to be expected. I will be repainting parts of the hallway at some point so that you can't see all my touch-ups. Home improvement projects never go exactly to plan, do they?


You can see the terrible touch-ups in the picture, but look how nice the whole area looks! I love that the kids are using it and that the only shoes I've tripped over lately, are the hubs. I mean I don't love that, but it's so much better than dodging several pairs on my trek from the front door to the kitchen.


So there's the new drop zone, and I gotta say I love it a little more that it didn't cost me a penny, not including the $13 for the new paint for the walls. I love how simple and easy it came together and how much nicer it is now to walk in our front door and not see piles of kid crap everywhere. Who knew that such a simple change would bring so much peace?

Thank so much stopping by!

Cheers,