Amateur Hour with Meg

I'm at it again with my coffee fix! This time, I taste a couple big-name brands alongside some local SoCal offerings. (P.S. How do you feel about the word SoCal? I think it's a convenient contraction, if not a bit surfery. Wait, IS it a contraction??) Go here for part one of the coffee tasting reviews. Trader Joe's Coconut Cold Brew I looove the idea of this one, but it's SO bitter. It works a lot better heated up with milk for a latte. Stumptown Cold Brew Very smooth; toward the sour end (vs roasty). I felt "meh" about drinking it black. With cream and added ice, it was delicious. And now, for the local companies' offerings... Secret Squirrel Cold Brew (Black) This brand is out of Anaheim. I forgot to taste it before adding cream. Oops. It's really nice; nutty and not bitter. "Warning: consuming this beverage may cause you to change the world." Bold Brew Coffee This one comes to us from a local company starte

Ohhh, you guys. The hours—HOURS AND HOURS—I spent looking at tile. On Pinterest and in real life. Eyes glazing over, scrolling through images on my computer. Ogling super expensive cement tiles, waffling about cement-LOOK tiles. Schlepping kids around and trying to prevent them from breaking everything in the tile stores. Grabbing samples and returning them, and grabbing more samples, and starting the process all over again. Here are some of said samples: Cliff would call these "public bathroom" tiles There are too many tiles in the world This thing was SO heavy and awkard! Give me actual samples, please! I was 99% certain that for the shower, I wanted white subway tile. Easy, right? Ehh... Not so much. There are so many different sizes and kinds of tile and different companies and opinions and warnings about tile being warped or broken, etc. etc. And of course all my decisions were questioned and fact-checked by Mr. Engineer. Which is totally a good th

Bathroom remodeling is so fun and sexy IN THEORY. But I'm writing this post lest I ever forget about all the unglamorous stuff—the MESS. Also, I apologize in advance for the huge uptick in ALL CAPS words. In my previous post , I talk about the plumber situation and the weird pipe that held us up. These were just a few of the contributing factors to the disaster zone we've been living in for months now. The demo caused lots of mess, obvs. This, I expected. Our entire sideyard has been lined with countertops, fiberglass, a broken toilet, light bulbs, and plywood to name a few. This is maybe 1/8 of the original mess—after four months of garbage pickup In the course of demoing, Cliff broke the bathroom window. Oops. Again, one of those things that we weren't planning on redoing but had to take time away from the actual project to fix. Yay for YouTube. And a HUGE shout-out to Stuart's in Escondido. The old school dude basically coached Cliff over the phone in g