The Story Of Us

Hoping you all had a wonderful Holiday! 2 weeks to go till baby arrives.. 2 weeks to go! though if this one is anything like his/her big brother it could be here right now!?  so lets continue to celebrating  another week closer with another giveaway.. This week I am teaming up with my two good friends and creative minds behind zCush Baby Nap Mats , these two women took the traditional nap mat used by mother's for decades in the subcontinental countries and made them better. They are the perfect support a new child needs and can be used at times of napping, playing, feeding and changing and best of all when family, friends or big brothers and sisters want to hold your delicate bundle of joy you no longer have to worry. zCush is giving away an adorable baby nap mat to one lucky winner.. Cotton Candy Pink or Plushy Paws Blue, you choose. To Enter: - Visit  zCush 's adorable shop and tell me in the comments which your favorite nap mat is and le...

We are nearing the end of our kitchen/family room renovations.. phew finally. And the place is really starting to come together wonderfully. You can see more before and after's here This weeks project was the fireplace, we had planned on white washing our red bricks to make the space brighter. I read about all the techniques and tried a few of them out before beginning. We diluted the paint using 50% white paint and 50% water. I started to apply the mixture with a paint brush while M wiped.. we decided that wasn't working.. we wanted the fireplace to be much whiter.. and the diluted paint was too watery. It was dripping everywhere and I had to go over the same place multiple times to get the brick to to look bright and white rather than murky and dirty. So I went with a dilution of 75% paint and 25% water. The we project also turned into an I project, where it was I painting and no wiping.. M considered the job not for him.. required to much patience and was too tedious for h...

3 weeks to go till baby arrives.. 3 weeks to go!  D arrived in seven days from today!  but lets continue to celebrating another week closer with another giveaway.. This week I am teaming up with Ershware , as  an artist and designer with a love for fashion and modern design Ashley  struggled trying to find unique, modern and affordable clothes for her son. So she drew on her design sensibility, past-life as a pattern maker, and her ridiculously heavy industrial sewing machine to take matters into her own hands. And soon was born Ershware ,  hip, modern and eco friendly hats for babies and toddlers. Ershware  is giving away a Star Aviator hat, in your choice of colors to help keep your newborns or toddlers little ears warm. There are four sizes to choose from.  To Enter: - Visit  Ershware 's cool shop and tell me in the comments what your favorite creation is and leave your email address so I can contact you when you win :) -...

We have painted rooms before, three rooms, a bathroom and stripes in the hallway of our apartment to be exact. So I would say we are no strangers to painting. We are aware of the do's and don'ts.. the important Repair. Prepare. Paint. What we were strangers to is the repairing. All the previous walls we had painted were pretty much new. They came with the original contractors paint.. so repairing was not needed. Nor did we need separate primer.. the paint plus primer combo pretty much worked. Step one, I took pictures of all the repair jobs on the walls.. thank god the family room area had been already taken care of by the contractor and we only had to deal with the kitchen part of the walls. We took the pictures to show to the Home Depot guy so that we were certain the products we were purchasing we correct.      The job required sanding the bumpy, uneven areas till they were smooth, filling in the holes with joint compound or spackle, waiting for it to dry and th...

4 weeks to go till baby arrives.. 4 weeks to go! is it time to freak out yet? so lets continue to celebrating another week closer with another giveaway.. This week I am teaming up with  Little Momma Boutique , brimming with beautiful  handmade children's items perfect for gifting, photos and special occasions. Each item is handmade by Hiedi and materials are carefully selected to offer quality products. Every items is inspired by items she personally makes for her own children or have created for others.   Little Momma Boutique  is giving away the most precious little candy cane elf hat. Hiedi's red and white candy cane hat was featured in the 2012 Holiday Issue of Giggle Magazine! To Enter: - Visit  Little Momma Boutique 's adorable shop and tell me in the comments what your favorite creation is and leave your email address so I can contact you when you win :) - Visit Little Momma Boutique's  Etsy  page and click on the Hea...

When the wall between our family room and kitchen see details here came down we had to deal with two different flooring, old carpet and newish laminate. The plan was to find the same laminate.. we found the box in the basement, how hard could it be? Harder than we thought.. that particular one had been discontinued.. and finding something similar was not an easy task..  Finding a flooring that was kind of close but not close enough would seem like a mistake.. so we decided to go different, this way it would seem like an intentional design choice.. I had always wanted a chocolaty dark floor.. The next thing to take into consideration was the transition between the two floors.. generally what is used it a T- Moulding, that strip you see in the above picture connecting the two floors together. Not the prettiest option. Pinterest to the rescue..  Adding tile to the mix would help to blend the two different brown together and there would be no awkward bump in t...

5 weeks to go till baby arrives.. 5 weeks to go! so lets continue to celebrating though I am freaking out a bit I am also so uncomfortable I can't wait to get to the end another week closer with another giveaway.. This week I am teaming up with Sweet Melody Designs , an enchanting shop full of beautifully whimsical art for children. Each print is a print of an original creation hand drawn by Carrie. All of her art can by customized to any color palette of your choice. Sweet Melody Designs  is giving away an adorable 8x10 of her Baby Elephant Sleeping on the Moon print.  To Enter: - Visit  Sweet Melody Designs 's adorable shop and tell me in the comments what your favorite print is and leave your email address so I can contact you when you win :) - Visit Sweet Melody Designs  Etsy  page and click on the Heart to favorite it. - Follow my blog via  Bloglovin' It's as simple as that! Extra Entry - Get an Extra Entry by Tweet...

We are into day nine of our renovations.. we lost a few days due to the Thanksgiving Holidays... we hopefully have only a few days of work left though.. phew. Here's a look at what we started with and where we are now.. So, we started with this wall... the wall divided our kitchen and our family room. While both spaces are large I hated the idea of not being able to keep an eye on D.. and with another one on the way.. I think the open space would just make life easier.. and just think about how wonderful it would be to be able to entertain in an open floor plan. This is the view from our kitchen. Now looking at the same wall from the family room. To the right, the green room is what would be a formal living room. Notice the faux wood pillars along the wall, outdoor lantern lights hang off them.. the walls are a faux textured plaster like pattern.. now the interesting part.. the faux texture was not something that was painted on, instead they are plastic like panels nail...