We dub the blog The Open House because we hope that people will find a safe place within these walls, a place where all are welcome as they are. This blog is simply an extension of those walls. We hope that you find a few moments of welcoming, warm space here too. You are guaranteed to see some mistakes and some total failures. You are also guaranteed to see some success.
Case in point, tonight's attempts at domesticity:
One of Jordan's goals for 2012 was to try to roast coffee at home. There are a number of ways to do this, most of which entail the use of household items we do not own (for example, a popcorn maker). The idea got put on the back burner as the year went on, but today the dream was reawakened. Jordan stumbled upon a bag of green, unroasted coffee beans while perusing Artisan's Hope in Harrisonburg.
After carefully reading the portion of his book Home Coffee Roasting by Kenneth Davids detailing the oven roasting method, and after tracking down a perforated pan, the adventure began.
Below is a photo taken just minutes after the process, said to take 12-25 minutes, began. At this point, the beans were looking pretty perfect.
I asked Jordan for help hanging a mirror in the dining room, thinking that we had at least ten more minutes before there was any chance of the beans burning. Moments later, we heard a strange sound coming from the oven. When Jordan opened the door, black smoke poured out and the beans, touched by more oxygen, burst into flames. Key in Lindsey's panicked "Jordan! What do we do? What do we do?" and Jordan's amazingly calm, "We have to cut off the oxygen!"
Thankfully, he was right, and the fire put itself out, contained relatively safely in the oven. However, the chaos was only beginning as the entire first floor immediately filled with smoke. You will all be reassured to know the fire alarm works. All too well, in fact.
Charred.
Remember that mirror I said we were trying to hang?
I found two cheap Target mirrors at Goodwill earlier this week for $3 a piece. I decided to hang them horizontally in the dining room to help open up the space and bounce around light. Unfortunately, as you may know, such mirrors require one to attach brackets in order to be hung. I was determined to avoid using cheap plastic brackets and decided to try mirror tape. Have you heard of this stuff?
We had just begun to hang the second mirror when the beans caught fire, and while we were running around opening doors, windows, and trying not to inhale smoke, the first mirror descended to the floor with an impressive crash.
Luckily, things weren't all bad. In fact, we scored four chairs for our dining room table for $20, a brand new shower curtain for $10, and I finally got around to making silhouettes of Jordan and I for our bedroom.
This little project was SUPER easy and cheap. Jordan and I each took a photo of the other's profile. I used the basic iPhoto editor to create as much contrast in the photo as possible, scaled it to size, and then printed the images. I cut out the silhouettes and traced them onto black card stock. I used a red pen because it was metallic enough to show up on the paper. A pencil would work well too. Finally, I cut out the silhouettes from the card stock.
I found matching frames at Michael's for $10 a piece. I'm sure it would be easy to find cheaper frames, but I loved that these were square and the perfect size.
I had some extra card stock on hand in a variety of colors and, after choosing a color, glued the silhouettes to the paper and placed them in the frame. I just used an extra strength glue stick, but I think modgepodge would work really well too.
Stay tuned for coffee roasting round two, and perhaps a photo or two of our $20 thrift store chairs.
You guys are the best. When can we see you/visit you?
ReplyDelete-Nick