Archive for March, 2011
Fab Freebie: Initial Impressions
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – get a discount and see who won below!***
Everyone can score 10% off a purchase from Initial Presents with code YHL10 through March. And our two random winners of $75 gift credits are…Angela (who’s ARS initials sound like a pirate talking ’bout its booty) and Cecilia (who’s CRS initials are pretty run of the mill).
You probably know by now that we’ve pretty much never met a monogram that we didn’t like (I know that’s a weird thing for a dude to say, but I like letters and typefaces, sue me). So if you dig that particular brand of classic personalization as much as we do, then you’ll have no trouble burning through the $75 you could win from Initial Presents this week. They’re all about letting you customize their products – from cutting boards and wine glasses to clothing and jewelry. And two of you are gonna win the chance to put your mark on some of ‘em.
- PRIZE: A $75 gift credit to Initial Presents
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “MY INITIALS ARE [insert your initials]!” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … tell us what you love (or loathe) about your initials. Do they spell something cool (or maybe something embarrassing)? Do they make for a great nickname (kids in high school used to call me JP, for instance)? Are you kinda indifferent about them? Or do you wish you could change them to something more interesting?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, March 16th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: Two
- PRIZE SHIPS: The lower 48 United States
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winners will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday morning for the announcement of our winners. Good luck…
Note: We weren’t paid or perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we just like rewarding our lovely readers! See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics from Initial Presents.
Come To Momma
Yes, it’s yet another rambling rug post. What can I say- our old hardwood floors give us splinters (remember this episode when I got one in the badonkadonk while painting?). And rugs are definitely great building blocks for a room – so we lean towards introducing them on the early end whenever possible. And after dragging the ol’ 5 x 8′ yellow rug back out from the guest room for Clara to play on until we got a more appropriate sized rug for large & in charge Karl the Sectional, we finally found something that made us excited enough to whip out our credit card. Yup, we ordered this amazingly textured & bright rug for our living room from The O (yes I mean Overstock – I try to support those strange marketing campaigns where brands like Radio Shack try to relabel themselves as The Shack).
It’s cushy and bold and happy-go-lucky and supersized (just like Big Karl). And it’s family friendly thanks to pure wool materials and the nice soft surface that it’ll create for crawling and sprawling out. The description actually cracks me up. Here’s part of it verbatim: “Trip out on pure, green hand-spun felted New Zealand wool.” Hilarious. We can’t wait to trip out on it. Plus the 5 star reviews about everything from how great the color is to how plush the shag texture is had me at hello (each tuft is apparently as thick as a crayon or a stalk of celery- yes please).
At $424.99 it’s not cheap. At all. At least by our standards. But most things that we hunted down in that large of a size (it’s 8 x 11′) in pure super-thick wool (which is always what we prefer in a casual used-all-the-time living room for reasons of softness, quality, and no nasty off-gassing) were usually in the $600-$1200 range. Like this similar shag from West Elm that’s smaller for $700. So something in the low 400′s with $2.95 shipping (can’t beat Overstock shipping) was actually pretty appealing. Especially since we recently sold our slipcovered sofa from our last living room on craigslist for $600. Our grand total for El Rug came to $427.95.
In the end we just didn’t want to spend $300 on a cheaper rug that we felt “meh” about instead of investing a bit more into something we’d – fingers crossed – love and use for a long time (the color seems like the perfect balance of brightness without being too light and stain-show-off-y). Plus we’re still embarrassingly giddy to have snagged an 8 x 10′ jute rug for the bedroom at under $250 so that sort of created a little imaginary rug credit towards this one in our heads. Psst- Weird. The O must have just raised the price. Here’s a link to the rug now on sale for $499.99, but you can see from our screengrab below that it was $424.99 when we ordered it.
Now for the cleaning plan. Because we’re so not into high maintenance rugs. A friend of mine with three kids and a (giant) dog has a similar shaggy wool rug and she swears it holds up to stains and kiddos like nobody’s business. Crumbs, dirt, and dust supposedly come out with a quick vacuum so that’s definitely doable. And apparently you can subtly trim the long hairy tufts to “lift” a stain if anything catastrophic – like grape juice – happens. And it’s seemingly impossible to detect because I’ve stared at hers in search of the trimmed parts and can’t ever find anything.
As for how we chose the size, we just used green painters tape to tape out the dimensions on the floor of our 25 x 15′ living room to make sure it worked (should’ve snapped a pic of that- boo). And as for the color choice, it just felt like our dark sectional, pewter walls, and gray beams needed a nice bright rug to take the room for Cold Gray City to a Warmer And More Fun City. But we didn’t want something too light that would show off every “oops” moment that’s sure to occur over the next decade plus (thanks to one baby, one dog, and dreams of at least one more wee one of the human kind in a few years).
Now before we get any further I must declare that we’ll probably forever miss our too-small-for-the-sectional Favorite Rug Ever In The History Of The Universe (our old Moorish Tile Rug from Pottery Barn). Gray and yellow is such a sweet combination. We looked for other yellow rugs but they all seemed too thin or too light (or too expensive, therefore too precious for use) and we feared they just wouldn’t hold up to all that impending abuse.
But Old Yeller isn’t dying or anything. Because I totally couldn’t take that. Seriously. I love that rug like family. It’ll just be found hanging out in the guest room where it’s much more appropriately sized (a 5 x 8′ rug paired with a giant sectional like Karl in a cavernous 25′ long room just isn’t the best solution). Anyway, we can’t wait to meet Señor Shag-o when he arrives. Overstock is famous for fast shipping so we hope to share pics in a jiffy (wow, even typing that made me feel like my mom, who also says things like neato and dungarees).
Anyway, now that we have our living room rug pinned down (which will tie into our $5 art) we can start thinking about curtains and lamps for the console table that we’re planning to build for behind Karl. Plenty of light & dark gray + bold color + lots of texture + some pattern sounds like a good time to us. Have you guys ordered from The O lately?
Sprung-ish
Spring is in the process of sprung-ing here in Richmond and we’re boiling over with excitement. Warm weather? Yes please. Green trees? Bring it. Flowers blooming? Duh, winning.
So to those of you who aren’t on the brink of spring yet, we thought we’d send a virtual dose of the season – courtesy of some photos of what’s starting to happen around here – like the little buds that are showing up on the hydrangeas that we’ve inherited.
Spring is especially exciting this year because we get to be surprised by whatever magically decides to pop up around the new house – and we finally get to see what our property looks like in all it’s bloomin’ glory. The daffodils are already on blast. Holla.
Oh and for those who don’t recognize the house above, it’s the back of ours. It’s definitely different than the original brick ranch facade in the front, right? We think it’s really funny that the addition was only built about 10 years later (in the 70′s instead of the 60′s) but it has such a different vibe. Someday we hope to unify things. Not sure how yet, but maybe it’ll come to me in a dream. Sidenote #1: I once had a dream about tiling our old shower surround with white subway tile about a year before actually deciding to embark on that adventure (and to use white subway tile).
But back to the weather. Even Burger is itching to get outside and kick off what will be many months of bug hunting in a new backyard. Here he is gazing longingly out the living room window. Sidenote #2: This shot of the bushes makes Sherry twitchy because she wants to trim them like crazy.
As for the temp, the daily highs around here have been wavering between the mid-50s and the high-60s, even stretching into the 70′s a couple of weeks back. And that means yard work is quickly creeping to the top of our to-do list (especially since we got started a few weeks back). Which reminds us, we owe you a more official “tour” of the exterior of our house. So put that in your “stay tuned” folder.
The only bummer that spring has sprung on us has to do with the tree in the front of the house. It has grown (or was planted?) crazy close to the foundation…
… and stretches up the side of the porch, sort of feathering out over the walkway to the front door. We’ve always known it probably has to go (aka we should take it out before it takes out any of the house). But it’s charming, darn it.
Especially covered in white blooms. See them below? Sidenote #3: I just typed “see them blow?” which was oddly entertaining to me (I dunno, kinda like “thar she blows”), so I stopped writing this post and told Sherry about it. She only found it marginally funny. Maybe it was a you-had-to-be-there thing.
Anyway, don’t those white flowers in the picture above (not blow) make you love it? Maybe white flowers are the tree equivalent to sad puppy dog eyes. Seems like a shame to remove that sweet little tree now. Especially since we don’t think we can save him since he’s basically on top of the house (so we anticipate a crazy root situation when we start digging). Oh and while we’re on the subject of said tree, does anyone know what it is? We have no idea.
Despite our little tree drama, we’re ready to enjoy spring to the fullest (holy buckets, it’ll be Clara’s first birthday before we know it). I wonder how good she’d be at mulching. Hmm…
Is anyone else getting a good dose of spring fever yet? Are temperatures up and flowers out in you area? Who’s shoveling snow today?
