My New Favorite Quilt: "Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" by Mathea Daunheimer

"Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" by Mathea Daunheimer, 2016 

Apparently I am NOT the only mommy who wakes up every morning in the guise of a fire-breathing dragon, requiring several shots of espresso in order to regain human form!  Am I even sure that I AM a human, suffering from a curse that turns me into a raging dragon every morning?  What if I really am an honest-to-goodness dragon, magically transformed into a human each day through the sorcery of my skim milk and espresso elixirs?  And if so, at what level can I blame my wretched teenagers for all of this?  These are questions we may never be able to answer...  But in any case, this is officially my new favorite quilt and I just had to share it with you.

Detail of "Mummy Without Coffee Take 2," photo by Luana Rubin

"Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" is a 40" x 36" painted whole cloth quilt made by New Zealand quilter Mathea Daunheimer of Esparta Fiber Arts in 2016.  This quilt was exhibited in the 2017 New Zealand Quilt Symposium, and Luana Rubin shared it in her eQuilter newsletter this morning so I discovered this loveliness early this morning when I sat down at my computer to check email...  with my freshly-brewed latte.  :-)

"Mummy Without Coffee" in Process, photo by Mathea Daunheimer

Daunheimer starts with plain white fabric, quilts the picture into the layered quilt sandwich with heavy black thread on her domestic sewing machine, and then colors it with textile paints, referring to her process as "coloring book quilting."  How cool is that?!  Daunheimer's fabulous dragon patterns are available for sale here.  

Today, this espresso-tamed dragon mama will not be doing any quilting.  Instead, I'll be waging war against the fleas that have infested my dogs and home, sewing myself a Halloween costume, and hopefully meeting with my husband's cardiologists as soon as Bernie gets back from a business trip.  And I'm gonna handle it all with aplomb, like a perfectly sane human... thanks to the magic of coffee.  

Lovely Latte Art by Rush Espresso at Ballantyne Village, Where Everyone Knows My Name

I think that Rush Espresso should try to purchase this art quilt for display in their cafe, because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only mommy in Ballantyne who can relate to it.  

Happy Thursday, everyone!

In Which Rebecca Eats Crow, As Long As It's Decaf

I have been known to say things like, "Never trust people who drink decaf coffee, nonalcoholic beer, or who have fake tattoos."  We can talk booze and tattoos some other time, but today I'm coming clean on caffeine.

I've been drinking coffee almost as long as I can remember, definitely going back to high school, maybe even 7th or 8th grade.  As a young adult I was drinking strong coffee all day long, convinced that the caffeine had no effect on me because, after drinking a few pots of coffee a day, if I tried to drink even MORE coffee to pull an "all-nighter" it would make me so ill that I had to go to bed anyway (and would fall immediately asleep). 

I have also "not been a morning person" for as long as I can remember.  I thought I was just an outlier on the bell curve, someone whose body needed 10 hours of sleep to feel rested...  Except that I never did wake up feeling rested and energetic, no matter how long I slept.  When my alarm went off, my subconscious would harness my imagination and use it against me in a desperate plea for more sleep-- I have had so many dreams where I am standing in front of my home security system panel, trying to shut off the alarm, and I can't remember the code so the alarm is blaring away...  Or it's the smoke detector going off and I'm on a step stool trying to smack it with a baseball bat and it keeps going off anyway.   Sometimes the dream is a little more honest, and I'm standing in front of the alarm clock and can't find the button to turn it off.  But eventually I wake up and realize that the alarm clock actually has been going off for an hour and I am still in bed.  And no matter how long I did sleep, I would wake up groggy and irritable, looking forward to that first cup of coffee that would make me feel sharp again and get me going.



Rebecca With Latte

Aside from the caffeine-free interludes of pregnancy and breastfeeding (I developed a strong aversion to coffee with both boys -- go figure!), the caffeinated coffee cycle continued for years.  When I was juggling my interior design business with home and family, I was drinking an average of eight to ten shots of espresso per day, stopping at Starbucks once or even twice every time I got in the car.  My kids thought that I-485 was a toll road and that the Starbucks drive-through was the toll booth.  My husband added up the Starbucks charges on my American Express statement and we decided that we would SAVE money by installing a commercial espresso machine and a commercial coffee grinder in our kitchen so I could make my own lattes at home.  Bernie even hooked the machine up to the plumbing so I would be spared the inconvenience of ever having to fill the water tank.  And I discovered Lavazza, a strong, intensely flavored Italian espresso that makes Starbucks coffee taste like wet cardboard.

My Crazy Espresso Machine

So a few months ago I was annoyed that my jeans were fitting tighter than I'd like, and after adding up the calories in those four or five lattes per day (130 calories in each Starbucks grande nonfat latte), I decided to cut back.  First I cut off the coffee after 3 PM, then pushed it back to noon and allowed myself two double-shot lattes each morning -- one when I first woke up, and another as I headed out the door.  I didn't notice any kind of caffeine withdrawal or anything -- so again, I felt that the caffeine did not affect me, that the nice, hot lattes in the morning were more of a comfort ritual than a true need for caffeine to wake me up, and that I was drinking "high test" coffee instead of decaf because the decaffeination process strips too much flavor and makes the coffee taste bad.

Meanwhile, I finally listened to my father and joined our church choir at Christ Lutheran this past Fall.   I have been having some difficulty with the upper range of my singing voice for the last few years for whatever reason, so my plan was to hide out in the Alto section and blend in.  I did not know about the choir hazing that happens at our church, whereby new choir members are randomly assigned to sing solos.  There are no auditions for solos, no calls for volunteers -- Mark just passes out the music and says "Rebecca please sing the solo" in the same tone of voice that my father used to say "Rebecca please wash the dishes" or "Rebecca please be home by eleven."  And so I find myself on the Internet, googling things like "performance anxiety" and "how to sing better in the morning."  And I find that not only is caffeine bad for singers because it dries out your throat and tightens your vocal folds, but caffeine has also been shown to relax the lower esophageal
sphincter muscle, which can lead to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) (Boekema, P. J., Samson, M., van Berge Henegouwen, G. P., et al (1999) Coffee and gastrointestinal function: facts and fiction. A review. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology Supplementum, 230, 35–39):

This could explain the acid reflux diagnosis I got from my ENT doctor, who stuck a camera down my throat two years ago and informed me that stomach acids have been coming back up my throat while I'm sleeping, burning and inflaming my vocal folds.  Incidentally, I know of at least two other coffee-swilling Lutheran singers whose doctors attributed their voice problems to this same silent acid reflux disorder.  Hmmm...  And here I thought those ENT doctors were just getting really good kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company that makes Nexium!  Granted, one cup of Folgers every morning probably doesn't instantly cause GERD, but remember I was drinking four or five double-shot lattes per day for years, each one containing somewhere between 80-100 mg of caffeine.  Even when I cut back to two lattes in the morning, that was still probably close to 200 mg of caffeine on a daily basis.

But the thing that really got my attention was when I read about the connection between caffeine and anxiety:

"Clinically, caffeine may be involved in the precipitation, exacerbation or maintenance of anxiety disorders (Kruger, 1996). Sensitivity to caffeine is increased in people with panic disorder and social phobia, and administration of caffeine can provoke panic attacks in these individuals (Charney et al, 1985; Tancer et al, 1991, 1994). There are clinical reports of anxiety symptoms improving on caffeine withdrawal or limitation (Greden, 1974; Bruce & Lader, 1989), and people suffering panic attacks may benefit from a reduction in their intake (Charney et al, 1985)".  You can read the full text of that article here.

I do have some general social anxiety that escalates into full-blown panic just THINKING about singing a solo, especially when the song sits near the register shift where I've been having trouble with my voice cracking.  What if that happens during the solo, in front of everyone?  My heart pounds, my hands get sweaty, and my breathing is shallow -- I can't get enough air.  The muscles in my neck, shoulders and throat get tight and rigid.  I feel like I'm going to vomit.  None of this is conducive to good singing technique!  So now I'm thinking about my Sunday morning routine -- Get up, turn on espresso machine, feed dogs.  Guzzle down 100 mg of caffeine.  Shower and get dressed.  Make another double shot espresso beverage to drink while driving to church and imagining all the horrible things that could go wrong with the solo, and all of the nasty things people will probably think and say if I mess up the anthem for everyone.  Instead of "The Scream," let's call this "The Solo":



Der Schrei der Natur  or "The Scream," by Edvard Munch (1893)

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch wrote the following poem and inscribed it on the back side of a later pastel version of "The Scream":

"I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."  -- Edvard Munch, 1895

That's exactly how I was feeling about an upcoming solo entitled "Let There Be Peace On Earth."  How was I supposed to sing about peace on Earth while feeling anxious and terrified, and fighting the urge to flee the sanctuary?!  I figured it was at least worth experimenting to see whether cutting out caffeine might help with my anxiety.  I could always have a triple espresso as soon as I got home from church, right?

So I stopped by Rush Espresso Café with Bernie on a Thursday and rather reluctantly ordered a decaf nonfat latte, which tasted like a cup of warm milk flavored only weakly with coffee, but better than no latte at all.  On Friday morning I made myself a decaf skim latte, took one sip, and dumped it down the drain.  Then I made a half-caff latte by putting one scoop of ground Lavazza Dek decaf coffee and one scoop of Lavazza Gold regular espresso in the filter basket.  It didn't have that instant "zing" of a fully caffeinated latte, but it was tolerable.  I turned off the machine for the day.  And on Sunday morning, I didn't turn on the espresso machine at all.  The solo went better than the last one, but that could be attributed to the wonderful sermon about not listening to negative voices in our heads that say we aren't good enough, or maybe nerves just diminish on their own from getting up and doing the thing we're afraid of again and again. 

[NOTE: Interested friends and family can listen to the anthem and/or Kevin Vandiver's inspiring sermon on the church as the body of Christ by going to the Christ Lutheran Church web site's Online Worship page here, clicking "On Demand Video" and scrolling down to the Feb. 1st 2015 Traditional Service video.  Kevin's sermon starts about 22 minutes into the service, and the Let There Be Peace On Earth anthem with my solo starts around the 50 minute mark.] 

I couldn't be sure that caffeine was the sole culprit behind my anxiety attacks, but to my surprise, I wasn't experiencing any of the caffeine withdrawal symptoms I had expected.  And I had bought a whole bag of decaf espresso beans...  So I continued with my experiment, making just one half caff latte each morning and then shutting off the machine for the day.  And something really weird started happening to me, within just a few days.  I have been waking up EARLY in the morning, BEFORE the alarm goes off, feeling wide awake and CHEERFUL!  Between 5:30 and 6 AM!  Before having ANY coffee!  Me, who could sleep undisturbed until noon -- I am seeing SUNRISES every morning!  It turns out, I LIKE sunrises!

Winter Sunrise in the Carolinas

And I am dumbfounded.  My caffeine had not been keeping me awake at night.  I never had insomnia.  I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I was usually pretty good about getting at least 8 hours of sleep in each night.  Could all that caffeine have been messing with my sleep cycle somehow?  Back to the Internet, more research -- and I find studies showing that yes, caffeine inhibits our ability to develop and sustain the deeper non-REM stages of sleep.  So all these years that I thought I was just genetically wired to require 9+ hours of sleep, maybe caffeine was causing me to "sleep shallow" so that I never woke up fully rested no matter how long I slept.  Despite my late morning snoozing, I've been chronically sleep-deprived for decades.  This sounds bizarre, right?  But it has been two weeks now since I had a full-caffeine latte, and I am consistently waking up on my own, without an alarm, after only about 7 1/2 hours of sleep, and I have never felt better in the morning.  I don't drink any soft drinks or energy drinks, so my total daily caffeine intake is below 50 mg per day for the first time in probably 25 years.  And it is making such a huge difference for me that even my husband is cutting down his own coffee consumption -- and that man couldn't drink more coffee if he was hooked up to a coffee IV!

I'm not saying everyone should immediately stop drinking coffee or completely eliminate caffeine from their diet.  Most of the studies concede that genetic differences result in a lot of variation in the way that caffeine affects different individuals.  Apparently I'm one of those people who are very sensitive to caffeine, because most of the subjects in those studies did not have diminished sleep quality as long as they cut off their caffeine 8 hours prior to going to bed, and I didn't see this weird personality change (going from Oscar the Grouch to Ernie in the space of two days!) until I had almost completely eliminated caffeine consumption.  I plan to continue with my half-caff lattes while I experiment with different decaffeinated espresso roasts.  Hopefully I'll find one that tastes good enough that I can enjoy a decaf latte without mixing in any of the high-test beans.  And I'll take life one sunrise (and one solo) at a time.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

I Spy Quilting Feathers!

I Spy Feathers in My Morning Latte!

Hmmm...  Methinks that Rush Espresso owner Paul McConachy has much promise if he ever gets tired of the coffee business and decides to pursue quilting instead.  Do you see those lovely feathers he created on top of my nonfat lattes?  He does that every single time, even for customers who are not quilters and who probably don't even appreciate it. 


St. Joseph's Lily by Embroider Shoppe, photo by SewCalGal

Well, I lied to you, Internet, and promised you a machine embroidery blog hop post today that is not going to happen.  I was planning to stitch out and review these gorgeous three-dimensional lily embroidery designs using South African embroidery designer Embroider Shoppe's fantastic designs, but I was unable to source all of the specialized supplies for the project in time so I had to drop out of the hop at the last minute.  I wanted to show you the designs anyway, because they are so spectacular and I really do want to attempt them some day.

In the photo above (taken by SewCalGal at Quilt Market; see her post here), what appears to be a vase of flowers is actually a vase of three-dimensional embroidered petals and leaves.  There is no fabric, just two types of embroidery stabilizer and thread for those petals and leaves.  Isn't it amazing that you could stitch something like that with your embroidery machine?  Embroider Shoppe has lots of different flower styles to choose from, including many lily varieties as well as hibiscus and poinsettias that would be perfect for holiday decorating.  Here are some of the ways I would use these 3-D floral designs:

• Embellish a ribbon-wrapped headband with 1 or even 3 lilies for your favorite little fairy princess
• Adorn an elegant wedding or shower gift with a single lily and a wide satin ribbon for an extra-special presentation
• Create special hair ornaments for bridesmaids, brides, or prom by attaching embroidered flowers to hair combs or pinning in place
• Attach a wire ring to each individual blossom for custom napkin rings -- dust with glitter or tiny Swarovski crystals to inject some glamour into your next formal table setting
• Use 3-D embroidery flowers in place of tassels on drapery tiebacks and window valances, with thread colors customized to coordinate with your fabrics

I would classify these embroidery designs as "embroidery CRAFT PROJECTS;" that's my only caveat.  Looking through the project directions, the actual embroidery part looks pretty straightforward although you do need two specialized stabilizers, Sulky Fabri-Solvy and Sulky Soft and Sheer Extra, in order to end up with free-standing petals and leaves that can be water dampened and shaped properly.  However, the supply list includes lots of non-sewing tools and supplies that you may already have on hand if you do a lot of craft projects, such as wood burning tools, hot glue gun, acrylic paints, fishing line, floral tape and florist's wire, and there is definitely some skill involved in using these items to create realistic-looking stamens for the flower centers.  I understand that Embroider Shoppe may be coming out with a video tutorial soon demonstrating how to create these flower parts and assemble the flower itself, and I think these projects will be a lot more accessible to embroiderers with different skill levels once they can watch a demonstration in addition to following the written instructions.

Even though I wasn't able to pull it off this time around, the Fall Machine Embroidery Blog Hop is still in full swing!  Please visit the other blog participants to be inspired by the projects and designs they are showcasing, and to enter in the SPONSORED GIVEAWAYS that each blog will be hosting this week.  Here's the adjusted lineup for the blog hop:

 

Monday, Nov 4th

SewCalGal 

Tuesday, November 5th
I Have A Notion

Wednesday, November 6th
Patsy Thompson Designs 

Thursday, November 7th
Beaquilter

Friday, November 8th

Stormy Days; SewCalGal 

Serger Love: Coffee-Dyed Lace Trim + 3-Thread Rolled Hem = Skirt Rescue!

Finished -- Ta Da!

I bought this RTW skirt from Ann Taylor Loft several years ago, and I really love it.  Brown is a good color for me, even in the summer, and this lightweight cotton skirt stays cool and comfortable and goes with several different tops in my closet.  I was annoyed to discover last summer that the main skirt fabric had been shrinking.  The skirt lining was hanging out below the hemline, looking for all the world like a saggy old slip.  So I had this great idea -- I'd let out the hem (it was originally just turned twice and topstitched) and add a lace trim to the bottom of the skirt to make up for the lost length!  I ordered some crochet trim online, but when it arrived it looked too creamy ivory.  I set the skirt and the lace in a pile in my sewing room and promptly forgot all about them.  Remember the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?  Well, I have a little Island of Misfit Mending in my studio that grows bigger and bigger, full of things that I could easily fix and wear again, but never seem to get around to...

Bernie's Coffee Press/Dyebath

So summer came around again this year, and after ransacking my closet in search of this skirt I finally remembered that it was in my sewing room.  I did some online research and decided to try dying the crochet trim with coffee.  Because I only had a yard or two of trim to dye, I used Bernie's French Press along with dark French roasted coffee (using WAY more coffee than I would if anyone was going to drink it) and boiling water.  Then I used Alum (found with the spices at the grocery store) as a mordant to (hopefully!) set the dye, since the skirt will need to be washed periodically and laundry detergents are designed to REMOVE coffee stains. 

Lace in the Coffee Bath

As you can see, the lace looked much darker wet than it did after I rinsed it out and dried it, but that's okay.  All I needed was a coffee brown tinge of color, and it looked pretty near perfect once it had dried.

"Natural" Lace Before Dying (it looked brighter and yellower IRL)

After Coffee Dying

So I dyed this lace about a month ago, and then put it back in my sewing room Misfit Mending pile because I was in quiltermode for one thing, plus I hadn't quite figured out exactly how I was going to attach the trim to the skirt.  My garment sewing experience, after all, has been limited to the occasional Aquaman outfit or Jedi cloak, as required by my Trick-or-Treaters.  I've never attached lace to anything before.

1300MDC Serger, Photo Courtesy Bernina USA

It took a mending emergency to get this project completed.  One of my favorite fitted sheets came out of the dryer with a split corner seam this week, and I wanted to repair it with the same three-thread-overlock-plus-chainstitch that had been used originally.  Well, I have a great serger with coverstitch and chainstitch capability, but I had not used it since I overcast the edges of the waistband on Princess Petunia's pettiskirt a year and a half ago.  I know this because it was still threaded up with turquoise thread.  Sergers/overlock machines may seem intimidating to those who haven't used them before, but honestly, they are not difficult and the speedy, professional results are well worth the hassle of setting them up and tweaking tensions, etc.  Or at least they wouldn't be difficult if the serger manual hadn't been written first in Swiss German, then translated to Mandarin Chinese, then into Russian, then into Swahili, French, Arabic, Italian, Gaelic, Pig Latin, and finally into modern English.  My Bernina 1300MDC serger purrs like a kitten and sews beautifully and reliably every time, but it came with the absolute worst instruction manual I've ever seen.  It took me two hours to get the machine threaded up and adjusted to the stitch I wanted, all because of one little lever that was flipped the wrong direction.  If I used the machine more often, I'd remember how to do this without reading the instruction manual every time...  So I decided that I'd figure out how to serge my coffee-stained -dyed lace to my brown skirt while I had the serger out -- and before I forgot how to operate it again!

Guiding Lace Against Blindstitch Guide, Barely Trimming Fabric Edge

I consulted my Bernina Serger Technique Reference Book and decided to attach the lace trim to the skirt with a 3-thread rolled hem, using my Blindstitch Foot as a guide for the edge of the lace.  Unlike the user manual, the Serger Technique Reference Book is well-written and full of large color PHOTOS.  In my opinion, it should come with the sergers, but I had to purchase it separately.  Having consulted my book, I starched both the lace trim and my flimsy skirt fabric, so it would have enough body to roll properly as the stitches were formed.  One downside of a project like this is that I didn't have any scraps of the skirt fabric for testing purposes, so I had to wing it and hope for the best.  I used the edge of the Blindstitch Foot guide to keep the lace lined up nice and straight, about a quarter inch from the edge of the skirt fabric, right sides together, and positioned the skirt fabric so that just the fraying edge threads would be trimmed away by the serger knife.  Just a few minutes later, the trim was attached.  Serger love!

I did open a side seam just a couple of inches before attaching the trim along the hem, so I'd have a starting and stopping place, so I just stitched that closed on my regular sewbaby and then secured the cut edges of the crochet lace with some additional hand stitches in matching thread.  Again, I'd procrastinated putting the lace trim on the skirt for so long -- it was amazing how fast and easy it was once I sat down to do it.  Now that it's finished, the skirt looks like it was always supposed to be that way, and the lining is no longer hanging out.  Who knows, maybe this small success will encourage me to tackle the rest of the mending misfits in that pile?  Well, let's not hold our breath...

Espresso Machine in Stable Condition Following Amateur Surgery, Awaiting Transplant

Espresso Machine, Just Out of Warranty, On the Operating Table

Out of nowhere, my Expobar Office Lever Plus espresso machine suffered a massive heart attack on Saturday evening.  It was plugged in and turned on, as it always is, heated up and ready to service coffee making whims at a moment's notice, when all of a sudden, the fuse blew.  We flipped the breaker, and it instantly blew again.  "Something has a short," Bernie declared, and he set about sleuthing to uncover the culprit.  Eventually he determined that my darling espresso machine was to blame, since everything was fine if he reset the fuse with my machine turned off, but the fuse blew immediately when he switched the espresso machine back on. 

At first, I begged him not to touch it.  Visions of, well, what you see pictured above, tormented my imagination, and the machine's manual warned us in big, bold type: THIS MACHINE CONTAINS NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS.  I had a vague fear that Bernie would come up with some kind of MacGyver solution involving duct tape and a plyers hanging out of the side of the machine.  However, preliminary research uncovered the stark and ugly facts: This espresso machine was manufactured in Australia, and sold to me by an internet company out of Rochester, NY.  It weighs as much as Anders.  It is no longer under warranty, I did not save the original shipping carton, and even if I had, it would cost a fortune just in shipping to send my espresso machine to wherever the nearest authorized service center might be located, and it would take a small eternity to get it back again.  Reluctantly, worn down by caffeine deprivation and despair, I conceded and authorized Bernie to commence amateur exploratory surgery yesterday afternoon. 

My husband ripped off the sides of the machine, poked around in its mechanical guts, and determined that the heating element had gone bad.  He read through Internet espresso fanatic forums frequented by hard core coffee afficionados, and informed me that my machine's problem was "pretty common."  He briefly considered scouting around for something "that might work" from Lowe's or Home Depot, but when the smoke started pouring out of my ears and my eyeballs burned fiery red he reconsidered and promised to find actual espresso machine parts.

So here we are, Monday morning, and Bernie just got off the phone with the tech support department at Whole Latte Love, where I purchased my machine.  The good news is that it is possible to order a $75 replacement part to make my machine whole again.  The bad news is that the part is backordered until the end of the month.  Seriously?!  No lattes until April?  I'll be driving to Starbucks in my nightgown and bathrobe every morning at the break of dawn, before waking up the kids.  Don't you dare judge me, either -- that's why they have a drive-through!

Starbucks Launches Haircolor Apartheid: Brunettes Get the Good Stuff and Blondes Get the Bland

Starbucks Blonde: for Ding-a-lings Who Drink Coffee with Pink Straws

Have you heard about the new Starbucks Blonde Roast?  When I walked into a Starbucks yesterday and saw the big Blonde Roast poster, for a split second I thought Starbucks was instituting some kind of haircolor apartheid.  What a stupid name for coffee!  When I hear "blonde coffee," I picture what comes out of the coffee maker if you forget to put new coffee in the filter basket and just run water through old grounds.  Have you ever heard anyone praise a pale yellow cup of coffee?  I normally try to abstain from blonde-bashing (since the only person in my household whose hair is NOT naturally blonde is me), but in this case I have to wonder whether someone in the marketing department at Starbucks was left in the peroxide too long.

[BTW, I have no idea who that poor girl is with the pink straw.  I found the photo here, on a web site that says she is Norwegian -- but if that's true, then I'm sure she is drinking DARK BROWN coffee through her straw.  All of the Norwegians I know take their coffee seriously!]

The beans themselves look so unappetizing, like Starbucks forgot to roast them.  Are we sure they are even coffee beans?  They look suspiciously like a lab-created sunflower seed/lentil bean hybrid.  Yuck!

Personally, I want nothing to do with the blonde coffee.  I found a couple of reviews online for Starbucks Blonde Roast (here and here) and they were uniformly unfavorable -- apparently it LOOKS like coffee, but lacks flavor and aroma.  The nicest thing anyone had to say about the Blonde Roast is that "it's not meant to appeal to people who like coffee, it's meant for people who like Dunkin' Donuts coffee!"  It seems Starbucks Blonde would be more aptly named Starbucks Bland or Starbucks Blech.  Isn't there a lawyer out there who'd like to launch a class action defamation lawsuit on behalf of the world's coffee-loving blonde people?

Have YOU tried Starbucks Blonde?  What did YOU think?

Teacher Workday, Here We Come

Today is a teacher workday.  Two little rascals, home from school all day!  You'd think I could sleep late this morning, but you'd be wrong.  I set my alarm for 6 AM, thinking I could walk the dogs before the boys got out of bed, but when my alarm went off the boys were already awake, plotting against me in Anders' room.  I heard them as I staggered down the hall: "Track 11!  Play track 11!  That one will really wake her up!"  Then, a blast of Led Zeppelin at an ungodly volume nearly knocked me off my feet.  Led Zeppelin?  Really?!  They are 8 and 10 years old!  So much for a leisurely morning.

So here it is, ten before seven, the evil music player has been confiscated, puppy dogs have been fed their breakfast and are out in the back yard, and little boys have been slightly calmed by a brief separation in Time Out while I made my latte.  It's still pitch black outside, but the blessing of caffeine is beginning to bring me to full consciousness so I can plan my day. 

I'm going to need to walk my dogs, and I will need to bring Lars with me to prevent mischief and certain doom while I'm out of the house.  This means I will need a bribe -- Ribbon candy?  A chance for computer or video game time?  Or maybe a trip to Starbucks later?  Anders I would trust with my banking password and the car keys, but Lars?  Not so much.

I have some pillows for a client that I need to pick up from my drapery workroom later today, so my little "assistants" will be coming along for the ride.  We can go to Starbucks afterward, if they cooperate and behave well in the car. 

Lars with his Vanilla Steamer, Anders with his Kid's Hot Chocolate

They really dig the cake pops at Starbucks, along with their beverages of choice: a Kid's Hot Chocolate for Anders and a Vanilla Steamer for Lars, who mysteriously has no enthusiasm for chocolate whatsoever.  Obviously, little boys who wake up and terrorize me with classic rock before the sun comes up don't get anything with so much as a drop of caffeine. 

What else is in store for us this day?  Lars is going to his first sleepover birthday party tonight, which means that I need to take two little boys to Target to select a gift today.  I think I'll delay Target as long as possible, because my Bernina dealer is in that shopping center and there's a good chance my sewing machine might be serviced and ready to pick up by late afternoon -- cross your fingers!  I'll also need to get Lars's overnight things packed up.  My decorative painter will be coming by to work on my dining room ceiling at around noon, so we will need to stick around the house for most of the afternoon (I'll try to post some pictures of that later).  I have some business calls and paperwork to attend to at some point.  Oh, and I need to get the Halloween costumes down and figure out what each trick-or-treater is going to wear (and referee any ensuing fights), because immediately after we pick Lars up from the party tomorrow morning we're taking our boys to the Phantom of the Lollipop concert at the symphony.  Bernie should be back from his business trip by late this afternoon, thank the Lord.

Man, just thinking about this day is making me exhausted.  Do I hear the water running upstairs?!  I need to go...  Happy Friday, everyone!

More from Paris: Setting the Mood

Bonjour!  If we were still in Paris, I'd be starting my day with a cafe au lait like this one.  I would have taken a picture of the yummy crepes framboises that I had with the coffee, except I devoured them before I remembered to take a picture.  C'est la vie.

Then we'd head down a beautiful cobblestone street like this one:

...And on our way, we'd probably pass a lovely little grocer's fruit stand, like this one:

I've never before seen such enormous grapes.  They were good, too; just watch out for the seeds.

That's all for now.  By the way, if anyone knows how to get French accent marks in Blogger, please let me know in the comments.  Have a great day!

Meet the Hood that Could Suck a Small Child Out of the House

Ah, yes, there it is, looking so innocuous in its partially cut-away shipping box.  This is the Viking range hood that required replacing the 7" diameter ductwork with 10" diameter.  It looks a lot like the stainless steel GE Monogram range hood that was there before, but I decided to replace the hood for two very important reasons. 

Number One: The old range hood had a big 8" scratch across the front of it that was there when we moved in.  Ding-a-ling (Bernie's loving pet name for the previous homeowner who was apparently not as "handy" as he fancied himself to be) probably scratched the hood when he installed it himself.  Bernie knows Ding-a-ling installed the previous range hood himself because he used the wrong kind of screws that weren't threaded all the way, so instead of it taking a few minutes to remove the old hood, Bernie had to fight with it for about an hour.  We already knew from the gas company that Ding-a-ling ran the gas line to the GE cooktop he put in all by himself, too, without getting it inspected.  The stove was leaking gas when we moved in and so little gas was actually getting to the burners that it took 40 minutes to bring a pot of water to a boil.  I am so grateful to the nice man from Piedmont Natural Gas for saving our house from blowing up!  We replaced the cooktop, refrigerator and wall ovens when the local Home Depot Exp closed and we were able to purchase brand-new Viking appliances out of one of their kitchen displays at a huge discount.  Anyway, I digress: Reason number one for replacing the range hood was that the scratch on the front of the old hood got under my skin and bothered me.


Bernie getting ready to install the new range hood

Reason Two: The old range hood sounded like a 747 was about to take off in my kitchen.  It was so loud that I couldn't have a conversation with someone standing three feet away from me if the hood was turned on.  What good is it to have an open floorplan so everyone can hang out with the cook if no one can have a conversation while you're cooking?  The new range hood has a 900 CFM in-line ventilation kit -- the 900 CFM part means "Uff da, that's a powerful fan!" and the in-line part means that the motor that sucks all of this air out of the kitchen is going to be nowhere near the kitchen.  Instead, the motor is at the other end of the ductwork, in the crawl space under my house, right before it vents through the exterior wall.  That alone should cut down on the noise significantly.  However, the motor for this fan is going to be a lot more powerful that the previous one, and the vaulted ceilings in my kitchen tend to amplify sound.  I have a low tolerance for appliance noises anyway; even the noise from the fan in our bathroom makes me irritable (we'll address that one of these days when we get back to the Master Bathroom project).  All of the appliances I've selected after taking sound ratings into consideration (the Miele laundry machines, Bosch dish washer, even the new Insinkerator garbage disposal) have been significantly quieter than their predecessors, and worth every penny to me for the peace and calm they bestow upon my home.  With two little blond hooligans running around howling most of the time, we need all the peace and calm we can get.  So when I found out that Viking sells a Vibration Silencer Kit for our hood model that will further reduce the noise by 50%, I had to have it. 

Here's Bernie right after he installed the range hood in the kitchen and connected the power.  He says it was a lot easier to install than he expected.  At this point, he hasn't yet installed the in-line ventilation kit (the motor that will suck small children out through the 10" duct) because he's waiting for the Vibration Silencer kit that hasn't been delivered yet.

...But the hood is connected to the power, so the lights work.  Hallelujah!  I missed having light over the stove!  I'm enjoying the undercabinet lights, too -- we put them on a dimmer switch and they are dimmed in this picture.

Today the Vibration Silencer came; it's that thing that looks like a giant Pringles can.  Bernie seems to find something funny about this contraption.  Oh, and sorry for the vampire eyes -- for some reason the Red Eye Correction tool only wanted to let me fix ONE of Bernie's eyeballs, and I decided that one blue eye and one red one is way creepier than two red eyeballs. 

I don't know when Bernie will get a chance to finish the installation of the ventilation system.  We've been having an Espresso Crisis of Epic Proportions -- ever since my commercial grinder and espresso machine were relocated to their new home in the butler's pantry, with a special sink and all new plumbing added just to accommodate and pamper said espresso machine -- the lattes have had a strong, intensely unpleasant plasticky chemical taste.  I have run the water, I have cleaned and backflushed the machine, and I have investigated online.  Bernie used the same pex pipes that are everywhere else in our home, yes he used the kind for potable water with the NSF endorsement, and no he didn't buy the cheapest stuff he could find, but apparently this gross taste is not harmful to my health (snort!) and will dissipate over time.  So now I have gone to all this trouble and expense only to go from sublime lattes made in my kitchen, to rotten lousy poisonous lattes made in the butler's pantry.  I am so desperate, I could almost -- almost -- drink the coffee at the gas station!

Anyway, Bernie changed out the rubber-lined flexible braided steel hose that runs from my water filter directly to my espresso machine, reasoning that if the chemical taste was originating in the pex tubing it would be removed by the filter before it got to my machine.  We're flushing out the boiler tank on the espresso machine right now and tomorrow morning we'll see if there's any improvement.  Wish me luck!

Woo Hoo -- Kitchen Granite Installs Tomorrow!

Look how busy my sweetie has been!  The new sheet rock is up and ready for the backsplash tile, light rail molding has been installed on the bottoms of the existing cabinetry, and the back of the kitchen island has a coat of the elusive Burnt Umber stain that the builder used on the original cabinetry.  It still needs brown glaze and a satin finish oil-based varnish or polyurethane, but I'm very pleased with how well the new carpentry blends in with the old.  As much as this remodeling project has spiraled out of control, at least we were able to keep the existing cabinetry!  Well, mostly we kept the existing cabinetry...

After ordering the new wine fridge (and 50+ bottles of wine to fill it up with), we discovered that the base cabinetry in the butler's pantry was only 20" deep rather than the standard 24" depth that our wine fridge was designed for.  So Bernie spent the better part of a day ripping out the old cabinet, removing the door casing, and building this new 24" deep cabinet that will accommodate the wine fridge on the left, and the copper bar sink on the right.  I need to order a new drawer front and pair of cabinet doors in the same profile as the existing cabinetry, but we don't need to have those before the granite can install.  Tile Collection graciously sent a guy back out to redo the template for this area.  I'm lucky they hadn't cut the stone yet!  Bernie and I were both saying we should have known better.  I think our subconscious wino selves knew the cabinet wasn't deep enough, but suppressed that knowledge in order to get the wine fridge anyway.  I know all about that psychology stuff because I used to watch Frasier before it was cancelled. 

There it is, all stained up with the wine fridge installed.  Bernie had to run water over to this area for the sink as well as for my plumbed espresso machine (the filter is for my espresso machine, too), and I finally convinced him to move an outlet and a light switch so I wouldn't have to reach behind the coffee machines to turn on the undercabinet lighting, and so the machine cords will be as inconspicuous as possible, plugging in directly behind where the machines will sit.  So this "how about we put the coffee machines in the butler's pantry" idea ended up being pretty involved.

Oh, and one more thing: Up until a few days ago, this ugly plastic utility sink lived in my laundry room.  My husband liked to use it for cleaning paint brushes, muddy boots, watering cans, etc.  I never knew what might be splattered in this sink, so I never dared to use it for soaking stains out of the laundry -- this sink probably would have done more harm than good because it was always dirtier than the laundry I wanted to soak in it.  Bernie should really have a work sink out in his garage, and I should have a clean, attractive sink in the laundry room that can safely be used for laundry.  This laundry room is off the kitchen and the door is usually opened, and it has wall cabinets above the machines that match the kitchen cabinetry.  There's no reason the laundry room can't be an attractive extension of the kitchen, especially since there's enough leftover CD Volcano granite from our slabs to do this little countertop in the laundry room, and the not-so-old existing Venetian Bronze kitchen faucet can be reinstalled for the new laundry sink, too.  We're even going to be able to reuse one of the drawer fronts and cabinet doors that came off the dismantled former butler's pantry cabinet.  The only thing I needed to buy was a sink...

Didn't Bernie build me a beautiful laundry cabinet?  Now they can template for the counter top, but the new sink probably won't be here for several weeks because I had to custom order a RED ONE!  :-)

The granite installers are supposed to be here first thing in the morning, and we're finally ready for them!  By this time tomorrow, all of the Baltic Barf countertops will be gone and the CD Volcano will be in its place, hopefully looking as amazing as I have envisioned.  I can't wait!

The Slippery, Sliding, Treacherous Slope of a Mini Kitchen Remodel

Can you believe this was an IMPULSE project?  It started with the innocent selection of wallpaper for the boys' bathrooms, then the realization that it was now-or-never if I wanted to change out their cultured marble vanities for scrap granite pieces...  Then I had to go to the granite fabrication facility to select my scraps, where my single-minded focus crumbled in the face of slab after slab of seductive stone, each one more beautiful than the next, and ALL of them more attractive than the Baltic Barf that is splattered throughout my own kitchen.  I got a quote on upgrading my kitchen countertops to a mid-range granite and decided it was worthwhile, but then when I went to the granite importer's warehouse to select my stone, I wandered in circles for hours and kept coming back to the same ultra rare, dramatic and risqué CD Volcano granite.  I know this stone is outrageous.  I know it has no place in my neighborhood, and that I'll never get the money back when I sell my home.  Blah, blah, blah!  It's unique, it's exquisite, I've never seen anything like it anywhere else, and my whole family is as excited about it as I am.


So, at that point, we were going to change out the countertops and backsplash tile, and that's it.  Ha ha ha ha ha (that's my Maniacal Laughter, by the way).

That's what the back of my boomerang-shaped kitchen island looked like up until New Year's Day.  It's just sheetrocked with a frame of white-painted 2x4 lumber holding up the Baltic Barf countertop.  That raised bar is only 12" deep, by the way, instead of the standard 18" depth, so it's not really enough space to actually sit and eat there.  I don't remember why there is a patched hole there, either -- it's one of those things that was all fixed except for painting it, but my darling husband forgot about the paint before he got around to doing it.  We won't be too hard on him, though, because he has been very busy over the past couple of weeks...

Bernie pried the first piece of Baltic Barf off and carried it out of the house on New Year's Day.  Normally, the granite company handles demolition of the old countertop and backsplash, but Bernie is going to be trimming out the back of the island in hardwood paneling with decorative corbels and staining it to match the rest of the cabinetry, so he took off that part of the countertop himself.  He's also going to remove all of the backsplash tile and replace the sheetrock himself, since I want undercabinet lighting and a pot filler installed and those will be easier to do with the sheetrock off, anyway.  I told you it's a slippery slope.

Ta da!  The ledge and the funky framework supporting it are gone by the end of the day.


So far, we have ordered new granite countertops and beveled marble brick backsplash tile, a pot filler, a new sink and a new faucet (because who wants to install the scratched up old sink and old faucet into a lovely new countertop?), as well as a new disposal unit that is supposed to be quieter than the one we have now.  And we're done, right?  Wrong!

On January second, Bernie moved my car out to the driveway and transformed the garage into a woodworking palace.  See how happy he is to see the table saw again?  After lamenting the absence of even MORE large tools that are still in his parents' garage in New Jersey, and improbably claiming that if only those tools were here, he could complete the entire project in ten minutes without spending any money, Bernie rolled up his sleeves and went into carpenter mode.

This is what the back of that same island looked like by the end of the day on January 4th.  Quite a difference, don't you think?  In designing the back of the island, I wanted to kick things up a bit, but I was careful not to go overboard so that when all this is finished, hopefully all of the trimwork in the kitchen will make sense together and look like it was all done at the same time.  I could have just ordered more raised panels like the cabinet doors, but I wanted to be a little bit more custom, so we did flat panels with quarter-round maple rope molding along the inside edge instead. 

Bernie told me what the tape was for, but I've forgotten.  It was temporary.  Maybe it had something to do with wood glue drying or something.  The acanthus leaf corbels are bringing in a new decorative motif to the existing trimwork, but the acanthus leaf is repeated on the light fixtures so it's not totally out of left field.  Also, smaller versions of these corbels will be incorporated into the design of the new fireplace mantel in the keeping room just off the kitchen.  Shh; don't tell my husband!  He hates it when he's in the middle of one project and I start hatching additional grand schemes that involve his labor and ingenuity.

On January 7th we went to the Tile Collection's fabrication facility and spent FOUR hours moving templates around on my three granite slabs until I got the layout the way I wanted it.  The template you see above is for the raised island bar.  I've added some curves to the outer edge that are not reflected on the template.  See how I got a balance of light and dark areas, and incorporated as much of the cool multicolored swirls as I could without necessitating a seam?  When I got there, they had this template taped on upside down so that most of my countertop was going to be black and white and neutral and tame, and most of the cool stuff would have ended up as someone else's scrap treasure.  That's why it's so important to be involved in the layout process when your stone has this much variation.  The little square you see below is for a tiny cubby where my purse lives near the door to the garage.

This piece is for the lower portion of the island countertop.  It's getting cut from a separate slab that is bookmarked (mirror image of the first slab) so that the movement of the granite will be somewhat continuous from the countertop, up the backsplash, and across the raised bar.  The section with a notch at the top is where my sink will get cut out.  Isn't it a sin? Again, my objective was to have as much of the complex, multicolored portions of the stone as possible, yet retain enough of the lighter areas to have the contrast and dramatic impact that I loved so much in the larger slabs.  Also, with a stone like this, if you're not careful you could end up with some countertop pieces looking mostly gold/green/black, and others looking mostly black/white -- there is so much variation in the stone that it might look like you used completely different granite from one countertop to the next.  So I tried to keep things as balanced as possible.  There's a long stretch of countertop to the left of my wall ovens, adjacent to the island, that will be cut from the area beneath the template in the photo above.

There goes my granite, getting put away until it's time for cutting!  Granite installation is scheduled for January 24th, provided we (I use that "we" very loosely) get everything else done in the kitchen by then and we're ready for the countertops to go in.


Now, as much as I hated the Baltic Brown granite in my kitchen, I really thought it would look good in the little en suite bath off of Bernie's home office.  All the black in that stone gives off kind of a masculine vibe, the busy blotchy pattern would not be so overwhelming on a small vanity, and the brown and pinkish-brown tones complement the horrendous builder tile in the office bath shower that I have no intention of ever replacing (that shower is only used once a year).  I had originally arranged with the Tile Collection to recut one of my old countertops for this bathroom for $150 labor.  Maybe if I hadn't been calling it Baltic Barf for the past three years Bernie would have felt good about this plan, but alas...  He has been working so hard on the kitchen, and he looked so forlorn at the granite shop, looking at all of the other stone, so we selected this Madique granite remnant for his office bath instead:

Slip, sliding away... 


Lars's laser tag birthday party with his school friends was on Saturday the 8th, but we had snow days in Charlotte yesterday, today, and again tomorrow due to ice on the roads.  Bernie had to cancel a scheduled business trip, which was good news for the kitchen project!

Goodbye to the hated backsplash tile, once and for all!  Don't you love that hole in the wall behind the stove?  This part reminds me of the scene in The Money Pit when Tom Hanks comes home at the end of the day and says to his contractor, "They destroyed my house!" and the contractor smiles and says, "They sure did, didn't they?  I tell you, they're work ANIMALS!!"  We love that movie.

This is a very misleading picture that makes it seem as though I was actually helping with all of this.  Bernie left the last two tiles behind the range hood for me to remove, stuck his night time Harley Davidson glasses on me in case I sent shards of tile into my eyeball, and sent me up the step stool so I could feel involved.  Thanks, Lover!

Here we are at the end of today, with all of the tile and sheetrock removed and the range hood gone.  Apparently the range hood was installed by Dingaling the Previous Homeowner rather than by the builder, because he used the wrong screws and the hood that should have popped off fairly easily instead had to be wrestled with for quite some time.  We also found dangling live wires behind the range hood once the sheetrock was down.  Lovely!  We had originally planned to reinstall the same GE Monogram range hood we had before, but we ended up ordering a new one for several reasons.  First and foremost, Dingaling scratched the front of the range hood, either when he installed it or by cleaning it against the grain with something abrasive.  The scratch on the front of the hood has always bugged me.  Second, the thing was filthy through and through, and not just the parts that come out and that are easy to clean in the dishwasher.  But the main reason we ordered a new range hood is that the one we had before was so loud that even on the Low setting, you can't have a conversation with anyone in the kitchen when the fan is running.  The new fan is going to have in-line ventilation, which means the noisy fan part will be down in the crawlspace under my house where I don't have to listen to it.  Slippidy-doo-dah, slippidy-ay!

We also found some dangling live wires behind this wall, apparently for undercabinet lighting that never got installed.  This is so unbelievably dangerous!  Pardon what appears to be snow; I got sheetrock dust on my camera lens.

Also, yesterday Bernie was complaining that my commercial espresso machine and burr grinder duo are taking up too much of what little precious countertop workspace we have in the kitchen, and we had an epiphany.  We decided to move my in-house coffee bar to the butler's pantry area between the kitchen and dining room.  I am okay with this because right now we get in each other's way when he's trying to cook breakfast and I'm trying to make myself a latte.  Creating a separate beverage center outside of the main kitchen, yet adjacent to the fridge, is a perfect solution as long as we can make it look more elegant than utilitarian.  After all, you can see this butler's pantry through the dining room as soon as you walk in my front door.

This new twist to our plans requires running plumbing to the butler's pantry for the espresso machine, moving an outlet and a light switch, and adding a hammered copper bar sink and faucet.  Oh, and a refrigerated undercounter wine cellar, because I miss the one we put in our last house before we moved, and I won't be able to store my wine in racks on this countertop anymore now that the coffee machines and a sink are going in...

Here we have more sloppy electrical work.  A random hole and a bundle of exposed wires that we discovered at the back of the butler's pantry cabinet.  You have to get down on the floor to see it, and neither of us had any idea it was there as we're shoving metal cooling racks and baking pans into the cupboard.  It really makes me wonder what else is wrong with my house that I can't see!

What's next for this project?  Well, Bernie's still got to finish up with the plumbing and electrical, and then he'll put new sheetrock up in the backsplash areas.  The base cabinetry in the butler's pantry is going to have to be rebuilt to accommodate my 24" wine unit, and Bernie was able to find out exactly what brand and color of stain was used on our existing cabinetry so we're waiting on the stain to come in as well as the new bar sink and faucet, wine fridge, and range hood.  Oh, and did I mention that the in-line ventilation requires a 10" diameter duct, and what we have now is only 7"?  Yeah, the ductwork has got to be replaced now, too. 

I swear I'm not ordering anything else for this kitchen!!