aprilco's Profile

Yes, please paint the ceiling blue, it would elevate this room from very nice to wow. Overall great concept and execution!

Normally, I'd agree that the bed should be moved away from the windows, but from what I can see in your photos, I think your bed is in the best place in this room, due to where the closet is located. Some ideas:
1. A set of night stands, larger than the one you have, will help anchor the bed.
2. A storage bench at the end of the bed will also help make the bed the focal point. It should be as close to the width of the bed as possible (but not wider). Plus it can act as incognito hamper storage (I see you have one by the entrance).
3. Adding a duvet cover and a few coordinating pillow covers in your preferred palette will also do a lot, and can easily be replaced when you want a change.
4. If you can paint, pick a color you love and go for it.
5. Whether or not you can paint, find some artwork that is the appropriate scale for the big blank wall. Ether one large piece, two large pieces, or a set of smaller pieces for either a symmetrical or non-symmetrical gallery style. Keep them in the same palette.
6. Curtains can add texture and/or color. You may also consider roman shades instead of curtains (I think there are a few tutorials for a DIY mini blind to roman shade conversions if you're up for it). If you like to match (kind of trending now), buy an extra duvet cover or flat sheets and make curtains or roman shades. If you're not into a matchy-matchy look, pick a color from your duvet and find solid fabric for window treatments. If you paint, the wall color will need to be considered when selecting fabric for bedding and windows. Often, it's a lot easier to match paint color to a fabric or rug that you love, versus the other way around.

I'd love a collection of posts on reducing waste/improving environmental impact in the kitchen. I've realized that our biweekly trip to the recycle bin almost exclusively contains a bag or two of materials that had been used only once or twice in the kitchen, and our trash contains mostly food items. I'd like to reduce this drastically. Ideas like plastic bag/wrap alternatives, food waste reduction (storing/freezing, donating, purchasing strategies, etc.), simple ways to make items that I'd otherwise buy packaged (to reduce packaging resources and also reduce food waste, since we rarely finish a container of something before it expires), composting options for small kitchen/no yard, non-toxic cleaning, non-electric small appliance alternatives, online forums for requesting that stores/manufacturers reduce excessive plastic packaging for foods, online farmers market/CSA directories, smart electric outlets, other cost-saving/energy reducing/space saving tech for the kitchen, how to ween someone off bottled water when he/she is convinced it's the healthiest water, etc.

An immersion blender is the best way to make smoothies! Blends perfectly, rinses easily, fits in a drawer. We use the tall/wide clear container with measurements that came with ours.

I love and consume coconut water, it always feels refreshing, but I've read that unless you're extremely active it doesn't hydrate the average person any more than water. When determining your ideal breakfast components, it's worth researching on your own to see if coconut water is adding anything beyond a great flavor, more calories, and cost. For me it's worth the flavor but when I'm really counting calories I skip it.

A great scanner recommendation: neat scanners, there are a few kinds. At work we use one that's about 12" long by 2" by 2", like a wand, it takes up very little drawer space and it scans letter size documents, business cards and receipts, connecting via USB, no additional power cable required. The included software automatically detects the data, so business cards can easily be added to contacts without reentering data, it exports receipt data to excel and other apps, etc. It was about $180, not cheap, but if you don't want an all in one on your desk, and have a need for the added functionality of OCR, this is a great solution.

For the media you do keep, I highly recommend the app Home Library ($1.99 or there's a free "Lite" version available). We've used it to keep track of all of our DVDs/Blu-rays, games and books. It barcode scans, and we've been impressed with it's ability to read barcodes for a lot of foreign and some out of print titles. The interface is great, you can share lists, export to different formats, and keep track of stuff you lend. It was initially a tough sell to my boyfriend, who has A LOT of movies and books that he wont part with, but once we started scanning stuff in, he was really loving it. It also estimates the value of your collection, which may be useful for insurance purposes or just to make you feel wealthier, it must reference msrp rather than market value since there's no way we've spent that much on media!

Worked in kitchen 8 hours yesterday, anticipate another 4 hours today. Discovered duplicate baking dishes for donation, that we don't need our separate blender or food processor or hand held mixer hanging out in the backs of cupboards since we have a kitchenaid stand and a wand with all of those attachments (mind blowing), that somehow I don't have cake pans but do have 8 pie pans, that there's a secret drawer in our refrigerator door we had never noticed (more mind blowing), and a better way of organizing our pantry cupboards. Everything is looking and feeling great, excited to make dinner tonight. Wrapping this up today is going to feel very satisfying, thanks for putting me on task AT!

I just did this for our NYE party, the whole thing, made the syrups, found pretty glass pitchers for the juices, had a bunch of sparkling wine, cava and prosecco on ice, glass cups filled with rosemary, mint, cherries, cranberries, citrus wedges and pomegranate seeds, and taped all the recipes to the wall next to the bar. It was a HUGE hit. We had a lot of other beverages, beer, wine, whiskey, gin, etc. but everyone loved the mix your own champagne cocktail bar. Thank you kitchn!

StillTasty is a website and free app that I use regularly, it has a big searchable database of fresh and packaged foods with lots of data about proper storage and shelf life, depending on whether things are room temp, refrigerated, frozen, opened, unopened, etc. It's settled many debates in our kitchen about whether something is still good, The app has an alert feature that I've never used but seems like a great idea.

Daily workflow for us is two people making breakfast, lunch and dinner (usually at different times of the day except for dinner), with regular baking projects and a coffee station area with a ton of different contraptions to brew it. I'm a clean as I go type of cook so I need to be able to combo handwash/load dishwasher as I prep.

We are blessed with a fairly wide U-shaped kitchen with huge counters, plenty of outlets and room for two people to move around and access all appliances freely, BUT...our cupboards are a major bummer.

The huge counters mean deep lower cupboards, with very narrow (10" wide) doors on the two side/corner cupboards, requiring us to reach around a ninety degree angle with zero visibility to get to anything. Because the doors are so narrow, installing one of those rotating pull out shelves isn't an option (I've looked everywhere for something that would fit). They are basically unusable except for the one that faces the rest of the kitchen, and that one has a flimsy narrow shelf in back and requires a deep squat to get to anything beyond the first 12" of storage (we did install a sturdy pull out lid rack that has had a significant positive impact). They're also standard size cabinets so they installed fillers where needed, leaving unreachable 6" gaps between the middle and side cupboards, wasting space and making it impossible to clean or use the corners efficiently.

The uppers, also standard size with fillers on the ends, store about 1/4 less than they appear to. I've read many opinions on upper cupboards, but I wish ours reached up to the ceiling to maximize storage and eliminate dust/grime buildup on top.

And finally, we don't have a pantry, so we use one of the uppers for food and one of those corner, hard to reach lowers for a combo of food and food storage containers, it's a mess. A floor to ceiling cupboard with pull out shelves for food storage would be so amazing. I've also considered adding onto one of the uppers to create a kind of built in breakfront. We have more counter space than we ever need so it's not like we couldn't lose a a few square feet of it for this.

Kitchen designers: please PLEASE only install pull out shelves or drawers for all lower cupboards and consider where people will actually want to put things. Our home was built in 2006 (moved into it in 2009) and it's tough to think about replacing relatively new materials due to poor design.