Baby it's cold outside.

Oh so very cold.

This is Northern Virginia, it isn't supposed to be cold, at least not this cold. And our house, is built for chilly, but not for cold. Most of the house does pretty well, but the garage is an icebox. Unfortunately, the kitchen is attached to the garage and the door that separates them is just not fit to withstand the cold, especially the breezy-breezy cold that we've got. (If you call 40 MPH wind gusts "breezy-breezy.")

We needed a solution, quick. It didn't have to be pretty - it just had to keep us warm while in the kitchen.

So off to Walmart I went today, planning to buy 2 and a half yards of fleece to make a door blanket, similar to what I saw my friend Heidi with a few years ago.

I ended up finding a $5 "blanket" that was less than half the cost of fleece and I figured there was no need to spend more than I had to. I say "blanket" - because I can't imagine actually sleeping with this, it is more like sandpaper than a blanket. Yikes!!!

So here is what I started with:

I then cut the blanket to just a bit larger than the door, you can thank my son for capturing this picture.

 

 

Then I secured some hook and loop to the top of the door frame (staple gun) and the blanket (sewing machine), also pictured are some magnets that I'll mention later.

I took advantage that we had a metal door and made pockets to insert the above magnets into to keep the blanket secure to the door.

And here is the finished, though not terribly pretty door blanket. (You can see the magnets, but they are actually in the pockets that I sewed on the reverse side, the blanket is thin enough to see these details through, but it still keeps the cold out of the kitchen.)

If we lived somewhere with weather like this throughout the whole winter, I might have spent more than $5 and an hour to come up with to something more attractive. For now, I'm just happy I don't have to wear my snow suit in the kitchen.