Cooking Slump

For the past several months, I've been in a cooking slump. One too many nights of uninspired taco night, or other just random dinners. One thing about me is I enjoy cooking yummy meals for my family, but with this slump I've been in, dinner feels so much like a chore and not at all enjoyable. Other the weekend Hasani and I were shopping at Barnes & Nobles and I started looking at cookbooks, I have a ton I have yet to replace since our house fire. I like a good realistic cookbook, the kind that make week night meals a breeze since Hasani and I both work full-time and most nights I don't start cooking dinner until after 5:30 pm. I'm sure most of you out there can relate to being on a time crunch, but still want to make a delicious healthy meal. I know once I'm back in my own kitchen, I'll want to cook & bake and make lots of memories in the heart of our home. I've put together a list of five cookbooks I plan on getting to start my new collection. I've already got ahead start and bought one from my list below. 
Five Good Cookbooks
1. While at Barnes & Nobles, I ended buying The Mom 100 Cookbook for only $6 bucks (the online price is more) I loved the variety of recipes a mixture with simple ingredients and full colorful pages of recipes. For some reason, I like lots of pictures in my cook books. Even though the cook book is for 'Moms' I consider it more of a go to recipe cookbook. I'm so looking forward to trying her recipe for Risotto, I've always wanted to try and make it. I blame it on watching one too many episodes of Hell's Kitchen and Chef Ramsey freaking out on the contestants that can't make a bloody Risotto. 
2. My mom bought me the Martha Stewart Cooking School Cookbook, for a wedding present and I just loved it. I love all the cooking details Martha shares. I love pretty much anything Martha. 

 3. The Betty Crocker cookbook is one of those classic old schools cookbooks full of knowledge and the basic how to. 

 4. I've always enjoined Ina Garten and watching her cooking show Barefoot Contessa back in the day when we had a cable. I plan on giving her Barefoot Contessa Foolproof Recipes: You Can Trust cookbook a try after reading though all reviews, I think this will be a good for entertaining which plan on doing at lot of when we move home. 

 5. The Pioneer Women Cookbook, I've tired a few of her recipes from her blog and loved them. Her food is that yummy 'stick to your ribs food,' meals I try to avoid on a daily, lol. I love that is cookbook feels like the perfect crowd pleaser  & large meal making cookbook. 

Girl Crush Cookbook


I have a big girl crush on Gwyneth Paltrow, I find her her style effortless and fun! I like that she puts herself out there and isn't afraid to speak her mind even if it comes across as smug or annoying. I guess there's two camps on Gwyneth: Camp Hate and Camp Love. I fall under the love category and have been thinking about giving her cook book a try, even though I typically shy away from celebrity cookbooks. I'm still on the fence about ordering her cookbook My Father's Daughter the reviews on Amazon are pretty decent, so we'll see if I end up buying it.

 Do you own any of the above cookbooks? Any suggestions for cookbooks I should buy? 

How To Measure for Blinds

I recently shared that one of my first jobs after high school was working in the custom window fashion department selling custom blinds and drapery. One of the many things I learned about working there, was how to measure correctly for window blinds and measure for drapery for the correct fullness  along all the custom blinds / drapery lingo (pinch pleat, back tab, traverse rod etc)

 For our living room and dining room, we went with in-stock cut-measure Levelor 2 inch faux wood blinds from Lowes. My favorite brand of blinds to sell back in the day were Levelor & Bali, I'm so happy they make ready-made ones now :) We measured our blinds (below is my how-to) because almost all windows are uneven and then picked out our blinds and had a Lowes CSR cut our blinds down to the correct size. Both of our living room & dining room blinds are the same width 70.5 wide, we purchased the 72 width blinds. 

 How to measure for inside mount blinds (blinds that rest inside your windows) you also want to check the depth of your windows, some older homes have shallow inside window depth. 
For our kitchen, bedrooms & master bathroom we decided to go with ready made roman shades from JCP, read more about how I plan on customizing the roman shades here. When measuring for our roman shades (and any outside mount blinds) I like outside mount blinds to be the width of the window sill, if there's no window sill add 2-3 inches past the window on both sides for privacy. When installing outside mount blinds, you can install them as high as you want 2-4 inches above the window or even where they meet your drapery rod. Whatever is pleasing to your eyes.  Measuring for outside mount blinds or shades below. I created a printable PDF version of my 'How to Measure for blinds' for everyone to use below. Hopefully my PDF works 




This week we'll be installing on window blinds for our dining & living room. Most likely we'll be using paper shades in our bedrooms until my fabric arrives for my to recover our roman shades. I'll share some blind installation tips this week.