Hat Obsessed

Prior to about 2 weeks ago I could only crochet in a straight line. For those of you who know how to crochet, but not really that well, you know that all those little symbols and letters that are on the patterns for how to crochet things are just a mean tease. They claim they can tell you how to crochet a sweater or a hat, but in reality you open it up and its just rows of little letters and symbols and you attempt to decipher them, but in the end you're just making stuff up. So you give up.
So I decided, screw the written out patterns, I live in an age of technology and its about time I used it! So I googled "How to crochet a hat" and clicked 'videos.' I reviewed a few videos and thought I got the idea. So I began.
I succeeded in making my first hat. Except it was for a GIANT!!! It is huge! I have not had the heart or patience to take it apart, so if you know anyone that is a giant or perhaps someone with dreds or a giant with dreds, let me know and I will gladly give them a hat... for free and made with love and hopes and dreams.
Anyways, moral of the story is, I tried again and I succeeded and I have now completed two hats and a baby sized hat for Miss Maple. I am officially out of yarn, so I need to use my 40% of coupons and head on over to JoAnn Fabrics to get me some more yarn!
In the meantime, if you would like to learn how, you can follow my technique. I found Threadbanger to be awesome and very helpful!!!

Keep me posted about Giants with Dreds
Amy

Baked Goods

My morning coffee inspires me in an odd way. When I drink my morning coffee (often with cigarette in hand) it suddenly seems like a great idea to go for a run. Oh and I should probably take Gus, my 1.6lb. "morkie." In my morning coffee drugged mind we would run like the wind. I would be 5'10" running like a gazellle with Gus a valiant hunting dog running majestically, head high next to his beautiful and amazingly fast owner. In reality my smoker's lungs would get me half way around the block before I passed out and Gus would just sit next to me, licking my nose, laying. In reality, we are lazy and out of shape.

So today, I told my coffee crazed self that all my genius coffee aspirations are unrealistic. I decided to make realistic goals for my day off. I watched Pushing Daisies and finished crocheting a hat. I went shopping and saved over $10 in coupons. I have recently grown obsessed with coupons. And finally, I needed to bake. I am not a cook. I cook like my mom cooked, quick and easy homemade cooking. Nothing complicated and nothing like Trevor. I do not cook, I bake. And it had been far too long since I had. So I decided to bake a strange conglomeration of multiple recipes and lack of supplies. This is what I am calling these cookies. Coffee Oatmeal Chocolate Chip and m&m cookies. Clearly still working on the name. Here is the recipe if you'd like to give them a try, I found them quite tasty:

1 1/2 tsp. instant coffee granules (I used hazelnut, because I had that kind.)
1/4 cup boiling water
1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups quick-cooking oats
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1-2 cups m&ms

1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Dissolve coffee granules or instant espresso in boiling water. Cool to room temperature. I feel like you could use just regular coffee and let it cool to room temperature if you don't want to buy instant coffee. I haven't tried it but I will on the next batch.

In large bowl mix brown sugar and butter, it'll form a paste kind of; Add egg and mix until well blended. Stir in coffee and vanilla.

In a medium bowl stir together oats, flour, salt and baking soda. Stir flour mixture into creamed mixture then stir in m&ms, chocolate chips and sugar.

Scoop up generous tablespoons of dough and place about 2 inches apart. Bake one sheet at a time on center rack for 10-14 minutes (less time makes a more gooey cookie - I went for the 10 min.) or until golden brown around edges. Cool 5 minutes on baking sheets then remove gently and transfer to racks to cool completely. (Cookies will firm up as they cool). Store lightly covered.

The cookies spread out a lot when in the oven, so if you want smaller cookies be sure to use less dough. I made one batch of huge flat cookies and 4 batches of smaller plumper and softer cookies. It depends on your cookie preference. So it will make right around 5 dozen cookies.

So there is my cookie recipe. I gave some to the Krulls for fixing the slow leak in my tire. They are my volvo kings! (More on that a different day!) And I brought some over to the new Reetz family to allow Emily some sustanance while nursing beautiful baby Maple. I also crocheted Maple a little purple and teal hat - because she is way to bad ass for pink! I then went to the cigar shop, hung out with some middle aged men and Phil (who arrived on a yellow ladies cruiser) while Trevor worked. All in all it was a pretty realistic and well used coffee inspired day. I'm pretty proud of myself!

Try the cookies... they're delicious

Amy

DIY: Wine Crate Coffee Table

First and foremost, tonight Amy and I visited for the first time Maple Marie Holiday Reetz. Maple is the newest member of the Reetz family and could not have better parents than Emily and Matt! She is a beautiful little grandma-featured baby and I can tell she is going to be the best little one for the two of them! Also, she has a killer name just perfect enough for a Reetz.

Check out Emily's blog to find out more about Maple. Megan [Emily's best-friend] wrote an amazing post about the day as well.

On to the coffee table...

Amy and I have been checking out thrift stores, rummage sales, and liquor stores for wine crates for several weeks now. The original intention was to make shelves out of them in our bedroom. As you all know storage is vitally important in a tiny apartment like ours. Finally this past Saturday after we spent the morning at the local farmer's market and were headed back home we were pleasantly surprised to find a 19-home neighborhood rummage sale was taking place. After hitting up about 9 of the sales we found a "Wins Milwaukee" crate which we can only assume is an old brewery crate for $10. This price is seemingly high at first but after some research we've found that $20 and more is not uncommon for old wood crates. Anyways, we purchased the crate and headed home not sure exactly what we were going to do with it as the crate was a little deep for a shelf on our wall.

So here's the DIY part. We decided to turn it into a coffee table and show you how we did it! All you need are a few supplies to make a rustic yet practical coffee table.

First you need an old wood crate.

Second, you need some flat sheets of wood. You can choose whichever kind you want, though the more used it looks the better. We were given the wood we used from a friend as firewood and they worked perfectly for the top of our table. You also need a few pieces to hold it all together as well as two small 2x4's so you can set the top into the crate.


Lastly you need a hammer and some nails.

Okay, so now that you have some supplies lay out the wood you want to use as the top of your coffee table into a pattern of your choice. Make sure they are going to extend longer than the crate on each side, but you can eye it out to your liking. We just so happened to have 6 pieces of wood of similar size and look.


Next, hammer some support beams into the underside of your 6 pieces of wood. We used 3 pieces of extra scrap wood to do this. Then take the 2x4's and nail them into the support beams with the distance at approximately the width of the crate. Like so...


Finally, put your newly built table top into your wood crate and you have yourself a Wine Crate Coffee Table!

You can then take the lid off as you wish and have storage space for blankets, magazines, crafting supplies or whatever you wish!

It looks cool and takes less than 15 minutes to build. It was definitely worth the $10 we spent on it and we couldn't be happier with the turnout. It looks great, gives us a place to lift our feet, set down our morning coffee, and adds a little bit of storage which is always important.
The best part? We did it ourselves and saved money by doing it!

Thanks for reading!
Trevor