The devil is in the details. I changed my coasters from boring and terrible to awesome and classy with some gold acrylic paint and about 15 minutes.
I love it when small changes make all the difference.
Before:
After:
I’ve recently started cooking a lot more, so when we moved into our new apartment in March, I decided that my old method of haphazardly storing all my spices and seasonings in the cabinet above the stove was no longer going to cut it. I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time shopping for spice racks only to find myself disappointed and dismayed because they were all lame.
Surely somewhere in the world there was a spice management system that would encompass my unique spirit and serve as an extension of my very soul.
Or not, but I did want to find something that would look cool on the countertop. Enter: the test tube spice rack. It’s adorable! It makes cooking feel like a science experiment!
Not satisfied to stop there, I decided to up the science ante and round out my collection with a set of Erlenmeyer flasks. These are perfect for storing cooking oils- I use mine to keep veg oil, olive oil, sea salt, brown sugar, and whatever fresh herbs I’m using that week (basil is pictured, YUM).
I’ve been using my test tubes and flasks for a couple of months now and I’m still totally stoked about them. I no longer have to shake my spices out of the bottles they came in like a total heathen and I can keep them in a location conveniently adjacent to my stove top without looking like a sloppy chode.
My loving and thoughtful husband bought me some new nightstands for my birthday back in June. This was a great gift for me because we did not have any nightstands, and I had fallen in love with ones from CB2 that I never would have pulled the trigger on myself due to the fact that I’m the cheapest furniture buyer in the world. Normally if I am shopping for furniture, I buy something functional from craigslist or the thrift store and go bananas with refinishing and replacing hardware. Once I even made new coffee tables from scratch using a power drill and a hand saw in my driveway.
IMAGE FROM CB2.COM
So my excitement over these nightstands was perhaps not proportional to what others might have felt.
When they arrived, they were lovely and everything I had hoped for. They were just a little short next to our bed. With a little hemming and hawing, I came to the conclusion that they were fine- they just needed extra tall reading lamps to go with them, no problem.
But then it turned out, problem, extra tall lamps aren’t even a thing, and if they are, they are ugly or a zillion dollars. So I decided to make some, and here’s how. Continue reading →