LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

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I’m picking out a thermos for you…

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I’ve been looking at thermoses (thermi?) for about a year now. I bought one last Christmas from Target that’s pretty cute, but small. Off and on I’d browse the thermos aisles in stores, checking thrift stores, generally being pitiful. (Brad actually witnessed the ‘put it down’ thing when I found one at T.J. Maxx this summer. I’m sure he has no memory of it. It was a light blue & green plaid beauty. My heart skipped a beat.)

Anyway, on Sunday I bought a thermos that has brought me nothing but joy! It’s as if someone looked into my mind and thought, “How can we make a thermos irresistibly gadgety?” Oh man oh man. It has a carry bag, a LARGE cap that becomes a travel mug, and when you look at it you think, “Yeah, but I’d want a lid for that so I don’t slop stuff on me.” Well, guess what? You unzip the bottom of the bag, unscrew the bottom of the thermos, and there’s a sippy lid tucked right inside!! Plus, it was cheap – ten bucks! I love this thermos so much. I wish a doctor would put me on a liquid diet so I’d have to take it everywhere.

750 ml of awesomeness

Behold it's glory!

IKEA hack

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Deanne once asked if our kitchen was always clean, and the answer is ‘no’. Our house is always in a state of quasi-messy, and I guess it’s a good thing that we take lots of photos for this site in the kitchen – it shames me into cleaning the counters. Speaking of cleaning, I’ve been thinking that it would make a lot more sense for me to keep my sugar by the coffee maker, since that’s when I use it the most. Having it mounted on a shelf or something would make it easier to clean the countertop….. and then it hit me. Brad gave me a bunch of cool stuff from IKEA a while back, and there were some magnetic canisters I couldn’t find a use for. A drill, a little modification, and here we go!

Make sure the hole is up.
img_2888.jpg

UPDATE: For use, take it off the fridge:

It would be awkward to tip the whole fridge.

Crayon Boy’s asleep.

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Lloyd was going to post about today’s dress-up day at school (Crayon Day), but he fell asleep around 7 and there’s no guarantee that he’ll post in the morning. So, here’s a place holder.

I need this. I need this like I need air. It speaks to my soul on every level – gadgety-ness, tree-hugger-ness, and weirdness. Please Santa.
Woo-hoo!
It’s a TOILET LID (sold seperately) that puts the water in the sink before it goes in the tank! You flush, you wash.  (It’s clean water, people, so calm down.) I think we should install these in the Center. Those little boys would flush every single time and have super-clean hands.

Revenge of the Nerds

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Homecoming week means dress-up days, and every few years we do nerd day. This, of course, begs the question whether I should wear anything different, but I usually do. four years or so ago Tom Guilford bought a tie for me that has a can holder, pen holder, ID badge holder and some other holder that I have yet to identify, but that works reasonably well for glasses. To that I added about a half dozen devices clipped to my belt and the obligatory pocket protector complete with slide rule. Lauren also supplied some attitude glasses that hadn’t been worn since college.

I'm the one in the center

Naturally, there were some who were confused about the social outcast hierarchy and who dressed as dorks, dweebs, nerds and Klingons.

I swear, I did not stage this.

Take that, Orville.

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I ran out of microwave popcorn bags a while ago. Rats. I really love popcorn. Seriously, I think I have a problem. No day is so bad that a beer and a bag of popcorn can’t erase it from your memory. Anyway, I discovered that I had a jar of actual popcorn that we used this summer in school. Did you know that you can throw a palmful or two in a lunch sack, fold it up tight, and microwave it as-is? Just take it out when the pops start slowing down, just like the other kind. The beauty of this is that I can slather it with butter (a reasonable slather – I’m not crazy), and feel good about putting actual butter in my gut, not some unpronounceable crazy fat. Yum!

Hee hee hee. So cheap.

I’ve used this bag eight times. I’m going for a record.

Get that butter melted!

Beautiful Mess

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Visit your local library!  I had to get some stuff for school, and as I was walking through the library lobby I saw the boxes by the door just chock-full of magazines they had weeded out.  I got a bunch of Martha Stewart ones, an Oprah one, and a Rachel Ray one.  I’m set for my Wealthy Life Coaches collection.  I got them for free!  (If it’s free – it’s me!) The only drawback to these are that somebody has gone through them before and cut out a bunch of stuff, so I can’t get too invested in an article.  It might not end. 

Well, it just so happens that the other night I had a strange hankering for something chocolatey.  In the Rachel Ray magazine there was a recipe for a cup-of-chocolate-death kind of thing.  I decided to try to make it. 

It required two tablespoons of double-strength coffee (done),  one teaspoon of brandy (which I don’t have, so I used wine), three ounces of melted chocolate (but I have the squeezy tubes, so that’s easier), and then knocking the bowl over with your hand while you squeeze out the last tube. 

I think it turned out pretty well, don’t you?

So swirly