Life

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Nutella (obviously). Cream cheese. A sprinkle of salt, and crusty Italian bread. Crisp toasted outside and hot, gooey inside, oozing with tangy cream cheese and the scent of chocolate and hazelnuts.This is dessert, in the guise of a sandwich. • Baked Nutella Sandwich The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) I recaptured an inefficient coat closet and turned it into a cheery little pantry — one of my all-time most useful kitchen projects! Here are ten more inspiring examples of pantries, each with a takeaway for small spaces. • 10 Inspiring Pantries The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) With fall just around the corner, now is the time to stock your pantry with hearty, healthy whole grains! From amaranth to wild rice, get the skinny on whole grain ingredients and whole grain flours here. • Whole Grains Guide The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Do you get hangry?! This is a very helpful word, a word to signal impending storm clouds and danger, a word to fear. Oh — not familiar with the term? Let me bring you up to speed. This is a word you should know. • Do You Get Hangry? The

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) I am a self-professed granola bar fiend. I nearly always have a granola bar or two close at hand. Making my own from the assortment of oats, nuts, and dried fruits that are always in my cupboard was a natural next step. • Homemade Granola Bars The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) It might seem crazy to forego the storage that upper cabinets offer, but there are some significant advantages in return. See 10 inspiring kitchens without uppers, and read more on why it’s sometimes a good idea. • No Upper Cabinets! The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Did you know there’s a lot of room between the studs of your walls? You can create shallow recessed cabinets and shelving between the studs. Here are five great examples in the kitchen, plus a guide to building your own recessed shelving. • Storage Between the Studs The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Any world traveler has probably noticed that in most countries outside of the US and Canada, eggs aren’t stored under refrigeration. Why is that? • Is Refrigerating Eggs Necessary? The Kitchn

(Image credit: Emma Christensen) The perfect soft-boiled egg should have firm, custard-like whites and a warm runny yolk. This is a slightly trickier endeavor than simply hard-boiling eggs, but nothing that can’t be mastered in the space of a Saturday morning! • Soft-Boiled Eggs The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) I don’t like to play favorites, but baking eggs in individual ramekins until the whites are barely set and the yolks reach that creamy, pudding-like consistency may, perhaps, be my egg de resistance. Here’s how to do it. • Eggs en Cocotte The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Inspired by a pin or two of chalkboard walls in kitchens, I thought it fitting to have a chalkboard menu prominently on display in the dining room. So I DIY’ed a chalkboard-painted piece of plywood on the wall. Easy, not-permanent, moveable, perfect. • DIY Chalkboard Menu Board The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) With so much produce at our fingertips this season, it’s time for a refresher on the proper way to store various fruits and vegetables. Here are the best ways to store apples, tomatoes, fresh basil, and many, many more varieties of fresh produce. • Fruit + Vegetable Storage The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Alina takes the best of what a country’s cooking and design tradition has to offer and brings it into her home. All the materials are natural and all the colors are warm. It seems that, aside from the food, everything about this kitchen will last forever. • Alina’s Exotic Cooking Lair

Once you make homemade nut milks at home, you’ll likely stop buying them at the store. They really are so simple, and it’s nice knowing exactly what’s in them and being able to completely control the amount of sweetness on your own. • DIY Nut Milks The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) We’ve shared a few tips before on how to best separate eggs, but this trick made us stop in our tracks. We can’t understand a word of the video, but the visuals are so compelling that we don’t need to. Prepare to be amazed: • Egg Separating Trick The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) I have a beautiful wooden spoon, one of my favorite things in my kitchen. It was carved by hand and because of that, it was expensive. So when I stumbled on an old article from Mother Earth News on how to carve your own wooden spoon, I was intrigued. • DIY

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Cold from the fridge, a cup of watermelon is my favorite August treat. Here’s the best way I’ve found to quickly and easily cut a watermelon into neat, even cubes for snacks and salads. • Cutting a Watermelon The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) I cannot believe school is starting already! It’s time for the lunchbox to emerge from the dark cupboard you stashed it in all summer, and it’s time to stock it with some good snacks for fall. Here are 15 favorites — all homemade and yummy. • 15 Homemade Snacks The

It isn’t always easy to find premade versions of common African spice blends like Ras el Hanout at the local supermarket, but the truth is, if you have a well-stocked spice rack, you likely have almost all the components to make these mixtures on your own. • 5 African Spice Blends The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Shopping for cabinet hardware can be overwhelming, so to help ease the stress we’ve provided a list of 10 online shopping sources for cabinet knobs and pulls to get you started. We think you’re bound to find what you’re looking for at one of these places! • Kitchen Cabinet Hardware

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Cookie Monster’s famous cookie dough recipe first appeared in Big Bird’s Busy Book, from the 1970’s. If you like a bit of nostalgia mixed in with your sugar and eggs, this recipe is for you! • Cookie Monster’s Cookie Recipe The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) “Faith! It’s the cocktail of the summer,” said my colleague Janel last week when she was visiting me in Columbus. Janel quite handily talked me into trying a Gold Rush for myself. Well, it wasn’t that difficult. Do you know this drink? You should. • The Cocktail of the Summer

Minimalism certainly isn’t for everyone. In fact, it probably isn’t for most people. But in the words of Francine Jay, thinking like a minimalist can be “a fun little thought-experiment on what’s truly necessary.” If you want to play along, here’s her list of 15 pieces of furniture that you may be able to live without. Be forewarned: this list is probably going to strike you as extreme.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Some food lovers collect spices, others collect vintage cake stands. I collect recipes for flatbreads. I love them. Can’t get enough. Lefse, in particular, is a flatbread I’ve been eyeing for some time now. You might even say it’s my birthright. • Norwegian Potato Lefse The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) My wife and I solved our own storage dilemma once and for all by converting all of our lower kitchen cabinets—originally outfitted as cabinets with regular doors—into cupboards made of drawers… • IKEA’s Drawer Pull-Outs The Kitchn

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) We love seeing our readers’ kitchen solutions for storage and organization. This photo and email from a reader named Brent was especially inspiring. He and his wife organized nearly everything in their kitchen on one wire shelving unit… • Kitchen Shelving Unit The Kitchn

Sometimes small-town life can get you down. Everyone’s going to West Elm, or Anthropologie, or heck — even Target, and you can only dream about being close enough to one of those stores to be able to casually drop by. Well, I’m here to remind you of ten reasons why living in a small town can really rock.1. Trendy design is hard to find.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Want to eat more salad? Then learn how to prepare all the ingredients faster! The following tools are our go-to kitchen essentials for quick salad making. They’ll help you clean lettuce, chop veggies, and whiz salad dressing in no time. • 5 Salad Tools The Kitchn

You might already use your email or notes apps on your smartphone to keep track of little everyday reminders. But your camera app and photo album can be just as useful as a memory aid. Here are a few things that can easily be remembered with a quick snap of your camera phone’s shutter button: • A reminder of where you parked. Parking in the city is no joke. • Your printer cartridges. Make sure you can see the refill numbers. • Your family members’ clothing sizes.

Looking through all the Small Cool entries this month has me pining for the small space I used to inhabit — I loved it so much, but I don’t miss the challenge of hosting overnight guests in such a small house. We had one bathroom and one bedroom, and frequent houseguests that would often stay for two or three nights — sometimes more. While we love to host family and friends and put them up when they visit, it can pose a real challenge to keep everyone happy, healthy, and sane.

Dear Beaten-Up, Broken-Down, Ugly Old Plaid Couch: Thank you. As long as I’ve had a couch, you have been my couch. Your ugly, unmatchable plaid-ness has been my curse and my great joy. Now that the time has finally come to replace you, I find I can barely bring myself to do it. What will my living room be without you? What will I be without you? We’ve been through so much together. When my proud parents brought me home from the hospital, you were there.

When it comes to absolutely waking up for an important date, taking a chance on missing your alarm clock is not an option. But by setting up multiple alarms and customizing the alarms themselves, you can wake up in stages and make it to that appointment that just can’t be missed.1.

Around February 2011 I picked up an Apple 27″ LED Cinema Display for my home office, as a way to help upsize the screen real estate on my 2008-era MacBook Pro. I loved it, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it when the Thunderbolt Display came out, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then I bought a 13″ MacBook Air, and next thing I know, I’m putting the original 27-incher on Craigslist…But why would I do that?

There’s nothing worse than being at someone’s home and not being able to find an extra roll of toilet paper when it’s needed. Check out our list of things to do before company comes for 10 ideas that will help make your guests’ stay memorable for all the right reasons. Over the years there are little things we’ve noticed while attending parties (and hosting our own) that make guests feel more comfortable while they’re in your space.

I was raised to believe in the old-fashioned, inherent thoughtfulness of the hand-written note. In fact, “Santa” still leaves thank-you notes in my stocking every Christmas so that I have no excuse not to write them. I am 30. However, when it comes to party invitations, I have to admit I always go online. With features like guest tracking, easy one-click RSVPs, and pot-luck sign ups, it’s easy for both my guests and me to plan for the event!

The spookiest thing to happen in our house this past Halloween weekend was a toaster oven that mysteriously turned itself on. Was it a visit from a long deceased Bagel-Bites-loving ancestor? Probably not. It turns out that it’s part of a sporadic phenomenon that popularly plagues small appliances like toasters, microwaves and coffee makers. Has it ever happened to you?

Ah, the internet. Where else would we find answers to all of our random questions? Our latest internet research: Whether or not your cell phone can help you identify leaks in your microwave. The legend says that if you place your phone in a microwave and close the door, it will only be able to receive an incoming call if there’s a leak. But is that true?Paranoid about cell phone radiation? You’re not the only one.

One of the best ways to protect your home while you’re away is to appear you never left. Leaving a light on in the front window doesn’t cut it any longer and sometimes you need a little extra believability to help others think you’re still home (though anti-social) while away on vacation.Here’s a few of our favorite choices for making your home a little brighter when you’re away. Do you have a favorite that didn’t make the list?

So apparently we have piñata fever around these parts. We just can’t help it. They’re perfect for a party, a backyard get together, or could even be a fun way to pick summer chores (who says they can’t come pouring out amongst other things?) for little ones, but sometimes we’re not into all that sugar. Here are a few non-food ideas instead!1. Bubbles: You can find small packages of bubbles (check with wedding supplies) that won’t weigh things down too much!2.

Imagine getting ready to curl up inside your humble and comfy little abode. You’ve popped in a DVD and made your way to the kitchen to gather up some delicious treats and crack open a frosty brew. But when you sit down with your grub, you find yourself sitting through what seems like endless and unskippable movie previews and piracy warnings—what a buzzkill. If only you knew the remote-control trick that works on nearly every DVD Player (Hint: It’s not the menu button.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Yes, that’s right; you heard us. Creamy, soft-serve style ice cream with just one ingredient. No ice cream maker needed, either! What is this one magic ingredient that can be whipped into perfectly rich and silky ice cream, with no additional dairy, sweeteners, or ingredients needed whatsoever? • Read the full

My balcony is an extension of my kitchen and home. I have experimented with all kinds of furniture arrangement, surfaces and growing over the past two seasons, and this season I am finally satisfied with the layout and look. Chelsea and I (and Porkchop) enjoy our balcony in the warm months by cooking and relaxing

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) In Week Three of the Kitchen Cure, part of your assignment was to do something beautiful for your kitchen. Here’s a shot of our dining table over the weekend—not exactly the kitchen, but close. And it uses those recycled soda bottles we’ve been talking about… • Click here to read the

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Time to expand your green knowledge. We must admit that we had actually never seen an episode of Sundance’s Green Porno until recently, and now we’re totally fascinated! Leave it to Isabella Rossellini to make the sex life of insects (season one) and marine animals (season two) feel like a walk

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy) Your Kitchen Cure assignment this week is to clean up the kitchen and finish restocking, reorganizing, and doing whatever your kitchen needs to be ready to get cooking next week. Cleaning isn’t the sexiest topic, but we still love to talk about it. A clean kitchen is a healthy kitchen, so