Friday, July 15, 2011

Thank you, HomeGoods!!

Last weekend we gave our living room a little revamp (oh I cannot wait to show you!!).  One of the things we replaced was this rug:

The first picture of our living room with the floors installed in 2008

I actually LOVE this rug, it's so cushy and comfy on our wood floors.  We got it on sale at Home Depot years ago and it has held up pretty darn well in my opinion.  We were planning on keeping this rug in our living room, but it looked VERY funny and small with our new layout.  We needed something much bigger than our 5x8 size.

We had kind of already looked at a couple of stores and online in case we might have to replace the rug, but we hadn't found anything we liked.  On a whim we decided to stop in at HomeGoods to just see if they might have something we liked.  We didn't have anything in particular in mind, just something neutral but with a pattern.  And that's when we saw it.......

Please ignore the mess and just admire the beauty of the rug.....

It was chic and modern all rolled up into one glorious rug ..... seriously.  I wouldn't even leave that rug's side while Kevin went to find someone to roll it up.  I couldn't risk someone thinking it was as gorgeous as I did.   And you know that HomeGoods is always good for a deal....and this was no exception!  We stole bought this wool beauty for 65% off retail.



The best thing is the rug fit perfectly in the living room and it matches all the new furniture (post coming on that soon!!)

Oooh, sneak a peak of that chair!!!

Do you have a wool rug?  What's the best way to clean/maintain it??


 

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Oh Sectional!

So last week I told you about the perfect little sectional we found to go in our living room .....


Since falling in love with it, I've been looking at different sectionals and their coffee tables/ottomans.  Here are some that I love.....but I'm not sure what would look the best or be the most functional:


I love this ottoman (room designed by Candice Olsen), even though it's not a sectional around it, it's a pretty "square" room

I love this round coffee table with a nice square sectional...plus it looks like has drawers (courtesy of The Sweet Life Studio).



Here's another one that is kind of  interesting....two small square tables side by side...hmmmm (via bassett furniture)


Maybe an ottoman with some storage inside?? (from decorpad)


Here's a more modern round coffee table (west elm)


And here is my favorite idea (just different fabric on top and make it square).  I love that it's functional with storage under neath and comfy on top with a cushion and fabric:



What do you think???
 

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Do you remember our Master Bathroom???


 It may look cute, but a couple months ago we realized we had a small leak from our upstairs master bathroom into our basement bathroom's false ceiling.  Like bad homeowners we just waited for it to happen again without really inspecting the leaky area and well, it never leaked again -- until a month later when my ceiling was drenched.  Yes seriously dripping with water.  Wishing I had looked into our situation earlier I did what any good plumber's daughter would do and I opened up the ceiling and turned on the water upstairs.  No leak.....turned on just hot....no leak.....just cold no leak.....turned on the shower head.....no leak.  I was definitely getting my exercise running up and down the stairs.  Finally I pointed the shower head at the back wall of the tub to see if maybe there was a leak in the caulk.  Down the stairs I ran and stood underneath the open ceiling to see if I could find that leak.....and YES I did.  I was completely soaked from the water pouring out from upstairs.

Long story short -- in case you chose to skip my rambling story :)  Over half of all leaks in tile tubs and showers are from the grout and deteriorated caulk.  So before you call your plumber out to find the drain leak, be sure to check for cracks in the grout and caulk.

So here is a picture of what our neglected tile looked like -- and what the caulk underneath the shower door looked like -- gross, I know:



And since we needed to regrout we decided to get rid of our shower door circa 1983 and upgrade.  Good idea, right?


First step was to clean up that nasty caulk.  I used a caulk remover tool and a plastic scraper -- it worked like a charm.  It looks brand new now!! :)



While we were at Menards (currently our home away from home) picking up supplies to regrout we happened accross this door:

Sterling Shower Door in Bishop's Lace


A beauty, right???  I'm completely in love.  And sealing the deal was the clearenced out price tag -- that's right for a mere $80.00 we brought home this beautiful door.

The re-grouting was honestly easier than I thought, although it did take me a Saturday afternoon to do, I'm hoping I'll NEVER have to regrout this bathtub again. :)

Ahhhh!  So pretty now!

The door went in like a champ (we followed the confusing directions to a tee and didn't want to mess up, so the installation took us WAY too long).



And here is what our new master bathroom looks like.....



(Yes, we HAD to get new towels for our new door, right?).






 

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Living Room Inspiration

Since we've been looking at redoing our living room a little bit, I had to share some of the gorgeous living rooms I've seen in blog land and online -- get ready to drool:


From SoHaute Style


From House to Home

From DecorPad

http://rhynecs.tumblr.com/

From English Country Room Style

From My Home Ideas

From Mod Vintage Life

From House and Home




 

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sectioned Out

One of the things we'd like to do in our house is get rid of our GINORMOUS oversized furniture in the living room.  Although it's a super comfy set, it's just taking up WAY too much space for the amount of seating it offers.  Plus my feet don't touch the ground when I sit on it -- which isn't really comfy. :)



  If anyone has craigslist selling tips for us -- do tell!!

 Over the past weekend we decided to go furniture shopping.  Normally we do the same old Hom Furniture, Ashley Furniture walk-through (which we did this time too).  But everything looked the same and so BLAH!  Then we stopped in at Schniederman's Furniture, a Minnesota family owned furniture store with 5 stores in our area.  I've found the furniture store I'll shop at for the rest of my life!  They have gorgeous pieces!  Anyhow, we had gone to look for furniture for a different spot in the house and came across this (except we'd like some green pillows to have with it):

Mirage Chocolate Sectional by Fusion

It looks even better in person -- but OH MY!  I LOVE this!  And it's comfortable too!  Could a couch be any better than that?  And we found a bright fun chair to go with our new found love:

Lane Furniture Julia High Leg Recliner

The one we like comes in a slightly different pattern (Kevin even picked out a floral pattern!), but it's the same chair.....which is also a recliner!  These pieces actually allow the same (maybe even more) seating in our living room and they're much smaller so I can put other furniture pieces in the room too!  WIN-WIN!

What do you think?  Personally, I'm a fan of white couches -- but let's just say in our house it would not be a wise decision.  :)

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Getting my mojo back....

If you noticed that I've been on hiatus from blogging for the past weeks (that turned into months).....then let me tell you I'm on my way back! :) 

I'm sure you all know how sometimes life just takes a little twist and we have give up some of the things that we love doing to take care of the tasks, work and chores that really matter.   The last few months have been very busy, but we've recently gotten back into a few little projects that I'll be sharing over the next few weeks.   It's sure nice to be back to improving our home -- and I'm SO excited to keep blogging about it! :)  What fun!

And thanks to Pinterest I've been coming up with lots of great ideas on decor and projects too -- LOVE that site!  It's like blog-hopping on speed! (click here to join me there).

I'm so grateful for all my fantastic followers and subscribers that have stuck around while I get back into the swing of things -- I've enjoyed reading all your comments and catching up on your blogs too! :)


 
Linking up to:
Mondays:Between Naps on the Porch ; C.R.A.F.T; Craft-O-Maniac; Keeping it Simple; Mad in Crafts; Making the World Cuter; The DIY Showoff; The Girl Creative Tuesdays:  All Thingz Related; House of Grace; I'm Topsy Turvy; Lucky Star Lane; Sugar Bee Craft Edition; The CSI Project; These Creative Juices; Today's Creative Blog Wednesdays:  Blue Cricket Design; Creations by Kara; Debbiedoos; Domestically Speaking; My Backyard Eden; Night Owl Crafting; Seven Thirty Three; Someday Crafts; The Thrifty Home; Trendy Treehouse Thursdays: Beyond the Picket Fence; Craftastical!; Fireflies & Jellybeans; House of Hepworths; Life as Lori; Somewhat Simple; The Shabby Chic Cottage Fridays:  Chic on a Shoestring; Finding Fabulous; Fingerprints on the Fridge; Frou Frou Decor; Frugal & Fabulous Design; It's a Hodge Podge Life; It's Fun to Craft!: Just a Girl; Remodelaholic; Simply Designing; The Shabby Nest; Tatertots & Jello Weekend:  A  Little Lovely; Be Different Act Normal; Funky Junk Interiors; House of Thrifty Decor; I Heart Naptime; Kuzak's Closet; Under the Table & Dreaming

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and that your Valentine's Day is extra special with lots of love and fun memories!

Here's what I made for my Valentine this year. :)


It's one of our favorite ways to use over-ripe bananas at our house.  It's not the most exciting recipe, but believe me, it's delicious! (You can get the recipe here ..... I sometimes substitute a 1/4 cup of applesauce for the vegetable oil.  And if you're looking for some heart-shaped muffin molds, I used Wilton Silicone molds from Joanne's).


Happy Valentine's Day!


 

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Unjunking my Junk Drawer

Last week one of my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E blogs, Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone had the most awesome series on junk drawers!




The ideas that all her guest bloggers had on revamping their junk drawers were wonderful!  And they were all ideas that I could use too -- perfect combination, right!?!  If you haven't seen these -- head over to her blog and check them out!  You won't be disappointed -- I promise!

So after seeing how all the beautiful drawers I opened my junk drawer to assess my damage.......and yes, I will show you -- just to show you the before (can't believe I'm going to show this).........please don't run screaming from your screen.....




Yes, it's true -- my junk drawer is exactly that, a jjjjuuuuunk drawer!  You can see by my little organizing baskets though that I did attempt to be organized at one time -- I promise! 

The sad thing is, most of what was in this drawer didn't even belong in there.  For starters, I threw away half of it's contents (still not sure how garbage ended up in my drawer that is a mere few steps from the garbage can...).  We also had some medicine cabinet contents in our junk drawer -- again, not sure??


After purging, there really wasn't a whole lot left to go into my drawer......which means, I could really put some though into the contents of my drawer.  I wanted to put things in there that we're using all the time and need to grab quickly. 

One the items in our house that we use the most, are these:


If you don't have a little tool set for inside the house -- GET ONE!  They are the best thing ever!  I actually got them at one of those goofy family gift exchanges a few years ago.  I didn't know then that I would absolutely LOVE these....but oh, gosh, do I ever!  They save so much time by having them in the house somewhere for little things that need to get fixed in a jiffy.

Enough gushing about my teeny, tiny tool set though.  The first thing I did after cleaning out the drawer was to vacuum out all the dust and corner dirt and then I laid down this shelf liner from my favorite store, Target. :)


It just dressed up my drawer a little, plus, it prevents all the contents sliding around (one of my top pet peeves).


I also purchased this cosmetic organizer at Target which works PERFECTLY in my drawer.  I liked this one because it's clear and look how tall those compartment are!!?!


I needed a few smaller containers to store things like lotion, chapstick, nail clippers and one for our phone chargers.  I had searched Target Boutique for quite sometime  to find some cute, little organizing boxes, but no luck. :(  Buuuuuuut, I found these cute little tin boxes that I had kept from my hubby's watches and wallet.  This is one occasion that I'm SO glad I had the "hoarder instinct" and didn't get rid of them.....the one
occasion. :)


So into one, I loaded up lotion, chapstick, nail clippers, and a nail file.  And into the other one went our phone chargers.  PERFECT fit!

I also took a left over check box (I'm sure this was still in our house because of that hoarding gene I've inherited) and put in it some odds and ends that we use around the house, but not allll the time.  I have in there some felt chair pads (you can never find them when you need one), some 3M wall hooks and adhesive, some touch up paint from our outdoor furniture and some appliance touch up paint.



I had a little white basket left over from the last time I overhauled my drawer and I filled it with my home repair kits, some Gorilla Glue, and some Allen Wrenches......all the things we need to do any home repair quickly and properly.


In the clear cosmetic organizer, I put our camera batteries and chargers in one compartment, gum and mints in another compartment and scissors, tape and a ruler in another compartment.


I'm SO happy how my drawer turned out -- it's SO organized!  I'm so glad that I had the inspiration of my favorite bloggers to use for ideas.


Only like a million times better than where we started, right!?!


Now go check out Mrs. Brooklyn Limestone's awesome junk drawer overhaul series from last week -- you'll loooove it!


 
Linking up to:
Mondays:Between Naps on the Porch ; C.R.A.F.T; Craft-O-Maniac; Keeping it Simple; Mad in Crafts; Making the World Cuter; The DIY Showoff; The Girl Creative Tuesdays:  All Thingz Related; House of Grace; I'm Topsy Turvy; Lucky Star Lane; Sugar Bee Craft Edition; The CSI Project; These Creative Juices; Today's Creative Blog Wednesdays:  Blue Cricket Design; Creations by Kara; Debbiedoos; Domestically Speaking; My Backyard Eden; Night Owl Crafting; Seven Thirty Three; Someday Crafts; The Thrifty Home; Trendy Treehouse Thursdays: Beyond the Picket Fence; Craftastical!; Fireflies & Jellybeans; House of Hepworths; Life as Lori; Somewhat Simple; The Shabby Chic Cottage Fridays:  Chic on a Shoestring; Finding Fabulous; Fingerprints on the Fridge; Frou Frou Decor; Frugal & Fabulous Design; It's a Hodge Podge Life; It's Fun to Craft!: Just a Girl; Remodelaholic; Simply Designing; The Shabby Nest; Tatertots & Jello Weekend:  A  Little Lovely; Be Different Act Normal; Funky Junk Interiors; House of Thrifty Decor; I Heart Naptime; Kuzak's Closet; Under the Table & Dreaming
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