Category: At Home

Head to the ATM…

…because it’s officially garage sale season and I’ve never seen someone take credit or debit in their front yard. So get your cash ready.

Last weekend we went to a neighboring town’s city-wide garage sale, and aside from snagging a fairly large Coleman cooler for $5 and some infant clothes for our friend who’s expecting, we didn’t come away with much. However, before that we’d stopped at a garage sale our alma mater was holding at the storage building and I almost got a huge metal and wood office desk for $2. Would have been a steal but we have no place for it right now and we don’t want to carry it up the stairs. I did, however spend my $2 on this little beauty:

Gray is the “it” color right now and in our next place I want to do all the walls cohesively in shades of gray. I’m so excited about the color of this little utility cart and how great it looks as a side-table. Just think, people spend hundreds of dollars to get this look, and I got it for 2! It’s now between the two brown rocking armchairs on the far wall of the living room. The table that was there before, that Doug’s brother built (he has some mad skills!) has migrated it’s way to the kitchen.

I know it’s hardly original at this point, but how great does that gray look with the yellow wall color?

Seriously, I’m in love. I can’t stop staring at it while I write.

Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

I’ve decided to do something earth-shattering. Get up early. It’s hard to get up early either way, but since my current job doesn’t require me to come in until 9, 10, or 11 depending on the day, it’s hard to get up at 6:15 when my “other half” does. But, due to an office party last night and a cake that didn’t get made on Sunday like I wanted to, I got Doug to drag me out of bed at 6:30 to have breakfast and make my cake. He helped, actually, by measuring out all the dry ingredients. Measuring is the worst part of baking. I like to cook, not bake.

I made Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake but I used this recipe because I’m a bit rusty on my metric system.

Anyway, my most important realization of the morning was that we weren’t interrupted by the cute little pup at all. See, I let him out around 6 to “use the facilities” and then we both go back to bed. Then, thankfully, he does this until around 8:30:

Too cute, right? Well I’ve decided if I want to get stuff done, the window between 6:30 and 8:30 is going to have to be when I do it. Because all the other times I have to make sure he’s not destroying book corners or getting tissues out of the bathroom trash, etc, etc, etc.

I was worried about my cake when I put it into my round pans because the batter wasn’t pouring and I had to spread it in with a rubber spatula. Also, once in the pans it was less than an inch thick each. Panic! But, all in all the looked like they were okay. Then came panic part two: they wouldn’t turn out of the pans easily! But again, my trusty spatula helped me pry them loose and they didn’t even crack :)

Instead of making the chocolate icing Nigella calls for, I used cream cheese frosting (store-bought) because, yum. And it’s my cake so I can frost it how I like.

Voila. The finished product. A two-layer chocolate cake, made from scratch! Turning cakes out of their pans and decorating them like this really makes it seem like more of an “event,” doesn’t it? I think I’ll have a piece for breakfast with my coffee ;) Don’t look at me like that. Cakes and muffins are largely the same thing… so why not have cake in the morning? A sugar rush to start my day!

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Espresso! Cappuccino!

Do you remember when I blogged about wanting this?

Well, we went to The Spice Merchant and they were having a sale, so I got one for only 16! It is a huge difference from the Mr Coffee my dad got me when I moved to San Diego. We still use Mr Coffee when we are too busy to tend the espresso maker on the stove, but when we have a few spare moments to make coffee in our new “Marimba” by Bialetti we certainly savor (literally and figuratively) the moment!

Also, how about those blue counter tops and backsplash? Yeesh.

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