Manolo for the HomeAppliances | Manolo for the Home - Part 2



Archive for the 'Appliances' Category


Something Blue

Friday, February 6th, 2009
By Christa Terry

Among all of the merchandise Martha Stewart puts her oftentimes less-than-unique stamp on, her Blue Collection for KitchenAid isn’t half bad. The color she’s chosen remains popular for those whose kitchens can use a splash of color, and the iconic KitchenAid mixer still cannot be beat.

Blue Collection for KitchenAid

But never fear, all Martha Stewart has done is made a selection of KitchenAid gear blue and slapped her name on it, so you don’t have to worry that your kitchen appliances will stop working in protest if you attempt to make waffles from a mix.


The $243.40 Toaster

Monday, February 2nd, 2009
By Christa Terry

A wonderful post over at Carpe Diem illustrates just how far we’ve progressed when it comes to the price of consumer goods. Of course, when I say progressed, I only mean that we can get just about any tool or accessory for the home (be it curtains, couches, or the old fashioned toaster) for much less than our grandparents would have paid. Relatively, that is. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is for the economists to decide. Being that one can buy a toaster for a mere $12, I’m just fascinated by the overall difference in price.

Toaster

Observe… The cost of Sears Toaster in 1949 was $16.95, which doesn’t sound like much but adds up to a whopping 13.5 hours of work at the average hourly manufacturing wage of $1.26. Whereas the cost of a Sears toaster in 2009 is $19.99, or 1.1 hours of work at the average hourly manufacturing wage of $18.03. That explains a lot about why my grandfather will repair a toaster that’s on the fritz while my father will just toss the old one and go and buy a new one at Wal*Mart. Me? I don’t have a toaster; I just use the oven.


It doesn’t get much more useless than this

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
By Christa Terry

I buy my flour in bulk from King Arthur Flour, which means I get a new catalog in the mail every month. It never ceases to amaze me how many one-off gadgets and appliances are sold by a company that ostensibly caters to series bakers.

Things are going to get a little stickyWhat's wrong with using a plate?

The most recent example of flagrant pointless was the peanut butter and jelly spreader. It has a spreader on each end so you can avoid contaminating your peanut butter with jelly and vice versa. I personally prefer to use a knife in the PB and a spoon in the J, but that’s just me. I’d watch out if you’re using a runny jam, lest you find your fingers gunked up by sweet stuff when you turn it over to scoop your nut butter.

Then there’s the S’mores maker, which unfortunately did not come from King Arthur Flour. Back in my day — I can’t believe I just wrote that — we used a plate if we wanted to microwave up some s’mores. I’m guessing moms prefer washing a plate to scrubbing the defibrillator hands of an anthropomorphized…something.

Who buys these things, anyway?


How you feeling? HOT, HOT, HOT!

Sunday, June 8th, 2008
By Christa Terry

Funny thing about New England…winter morphs directly into summer. Last week, I was wearing sweaters to keep the chill at bay. Now I’m wearing hardly anything in a futile attempt to keep heat stroke at bay.

I’m this fan’s biggest fan

I’m discovering that I am woefully unprepared to face the summertime. My lovely new home does not have central a.c., and we do not by any stretch of the imagination have enough fans. We need more, like this swanky art deco-inspired desk fan from Horchow.

Is it any wonder, I ask you, that I am browsing fans like they are pictures of my favorite celebs?


Five things I can’t live without

Friday, April 18th, 2008
By Christa Terry

Everyone has that short list of items they’d take with them to that hypothetical desert island that comes up now and again in conversation. Much of the time, those things special to us wouldn’t be of much use to us on that island (what good is a Kitchenaid mixer without electricity?) but we’d haul them along with us anyway. Human being are kind of like magpies that way, and more power to us. I think that our ability to imbue inanimate objects with emotional value is fascinating.

Here’s my list, which I put together just now. I didn’t let myself think too much about my choices because I wanted to see where my impulses would take me.

YUM!

1. I try to keep an unending supply of petit fours in my pantry. Sometimes I buy ’em, and sometimes I make ’em from scratch. You don’t want to run into me on the street when I’ve run out. Little cakes…they are my crack.

Pretty things with a name that reads like a disease

2. My collection of Russian khokhloma kitchenware is important to me because it represents a connection to my heritage. Well, part of my heritage seeing as that I’m what one might not-so-politely call a mutt. In more courteous conversation I hail from “mixed ancestry.”

Ooh, creepy! I like!

3. I always admired my grandparents’ collection of masks from different parts of the world, and now I have all sorts of masks of my own. Why do I like creepy faces hanging inside my house but hate the creepy faces hanging outside of other people’s houses? I’m going to guess it’s because mine are culturally relevant. I do worry that they’re going to scare the hell out of my kids someday!

It really sucks!

4. My red Oreck upright rocks my socks — it was a hand-me-down from my grandparents, and thank goodness for that. Vacuums are way more expensive than I assumed they’d be back before I ever had a floor of my own to keep clean.

Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty!

5. As annoying and yucky and mean as they can be, I adore my my quatro of cats. Did you think I was going to say “the litter box?” Having living beings around is, in some way, invigorating, if only because I find myself chasing them around the house with the spritz bottle.

I guess at my core I am a crazy, cake-eating cat-lady neat-freak who has a weakness for other cultures. Now tell me, what are the five things that you wouldn’t want to live without? And what does your list say about you?


A rainbow in the kitchen

Thursday, January 24th, 2008
By Christa Terry

As I mentioned previously, I like my kitchens and my bathrooms to be white on white with white. However, there is a caveat. As much as I prefer a nice sanitized look where walls and floors and cabinets are concerned, I know that bringing in a splash of vivid color really makes a space pop from a looks point of view.

RED!ORANGE!YELLOW!
GREEN!BLUE!PURPLE!

Does your kitchen need some brightening up? If so, you could do worse than to incorporate any of the yummy, pretty things pictured above into your food prep area decor.

(stay tuned for a rainbow in the bedroom *wink*)


Inspiration to fuel your creative fire

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
By Christa Terry

If you’re into stuff for the home, you probably already know that there are 80 billion jillion time wasters out there in Intertubes land. Being that this is the case, I can offer up another time waster without feeling guilty because I know that I will not be responsible for ending your employ or your relationships.

I already know from your comments that at least some of you are into things like Freecycling and furniture hacks, so at least some of you will get a kick out of the stuff at Superuse.

Hang your coat on old Atari controllersLive in a recycled cardboard abode
Pop a squat on some old inner tubesLight up your life with hangers

A quick look around my home tells me that I’ve never re-purposed anything to the extent you see on Superuse. I haven’t, for example, turned an old television into a fish bowl or made a museum-worthy stepping stool out of old glass bottles. My paltry claims to fame usually involve turning an oldeat up desk into a farmy kitchen table and things like that. I am definitely not l337 when it comes to my home decor. Not yet, anyway. I’m working on it.


The sorry tale of my sinking sink

Monday, January 21st, 2008
By Christa Terry

I’m of two minds when it comes to appliances and fixtures that are getting up there in years. On one hand, the logical part of my brain says something like, “If it’s still working all right but looks a little outdated, that’s no reason to toss it to the curb. We’ll find some creative way to incorporate into a new decor scheme.” It’s the budget friendly choice. It’s the environmentally friendly choice.

On the other hand, my reptile mind is saying, “Baby, you’ve just found the perfect excuse to get that new sink you’ve always wanted! You can put it on your credit card…screw the environment.”

Long story short, my kitchen sink is currently propped up on a tower of paint cans to keep it from sinking any deeper into the hole beneath, and my reptile mind has already spent quite a bit of time pricing new sinks. What I discovered, of course, is that there are two kinds of kitchen sinks: the sort I can afford and the sort I actually want.

Model 58173:  Delafield™ Self-rimming Kitchen Sink - White

I can afford the sink above. It’s all right…it’s white, and I like my food prep and personal hygiene spaces to look invitingly antiseptic. It has two basins, which is what The Beard desperately wants in a sink for some odd reason. But the sink I truly desire? It is as beautiful as it is deadly to my bank account, as it would require a partial remodel to even fit it into our current kitchen set-up.

It makes me WANT to wash the dishes

My logical brain sang a little happy ditty when the contractor who came over to have a look at our sinking sink said that an el cheap-o clip could likely shore the whole thing up. Meanwhile, my reptile mind was somewhere sobbing in the background of my subconscious. *sniff*

Unfortunately, the economics of the situation has dictated that we go with the clip fix instead of a new sink, meaning I will have to live with my boring old stainless steel number for a little bit longer. Oh, but I’m putting my pennies in a jar and saving the odd dollar here and there so that one day I can approach our contractor and say, “Rip out the shite you see before you and build me the kitchen that I have mapped out for you in crayon on an assortment of cocktail napkins!”









Disclaimer: Manolo the Shoeblogger is not Manolo Blahnik
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