To Paint is to DIY + Giveaway!

***This giveaway is now closed!***

Lovelies! How good to see you! Welcome to day #2 of our top five favorites when it comes to making our/your house a home, the DIY way! We use to not like to paint. It was a long and painful process. Then after a few rooms we started to figure out tricks and tools to make it go quicker. Things to make it look better. Things to not ruin everything surrounding us. Eventually we got a little adventurous and even started to stencil full walls.

So let's talk what makes a good paint job. We never used a drop cloth. Ever. Until I noticed tiny little paint dots on our 80+ year old floors. They were a killer to "pick" off the floor. Enter the canvas drop cloth. I love canvas so much, I almost want to make curtains out of them. Purdy is our brush of choice because you never get any strays with them and they tend to last longer than other brands we have tried. As you probably already know we love our Scotch 3M tape, I almost feels it's part of the decor sometimes. If you peel it just before the paint dries, you get a perfect line every time! Now for the major moments, Shur-Line makes awesome rollers. Remember this mess? I think we bought every Shur-Line roller and Scotch Blue at True Value.

We thought for day #2 of our awesome giveaway week courtesy of Stack Exchange, we would doll out a sweet painting kit to a lucky reader! Everything you need but the paint to get your next room done line a pro! How do you get a smooth finish when painting trim? Click here to see what's a buzz about this question and other about painting perfect rooms and DIY in general.

Giveaway info:

• Prize: One (1)  care of Stack Exchange: Home Improvement One (1) complete 9-piece kit, One (1) pack of extra rollers, a canvas drop cloth, an extendable roller frame, three rolls of 3M Scotch Blue Tape, and a three pack Purdy Paintbrush set.
• How to Enter: Tell us what you dislike most about painting! Spill it!
• Extra Entry: Follow @StackDIY on twitter, come back and tell me you did!
• Giveaway Ends: Monday October 3rd at 9:00pm EST
• How Many Lucky Winners?!: One (1)
• Ships to: US Only
• Also: Please only enter once, with the exception of the extra entry. We select our winners using random.org and will select a winner by October 6th and notify by email, so use a real email address! 

Let's Talk Dirt(y) + Giveaway!

***This giveaway is now closed!***

Hello! How are you? I am jamming to The Verve Pipe - Freshman. I am also currently missing Joey at 4:37 am NYC time. This is the longest we will be apart from one another. It's been a totally gross level mush fest of love notes and text overload. You would think after seven years we would stop acting like teenagers, but no, we are totally besties. I wouldn't sleep until his plane landed, it's just how I roll. But you. I hope you are well. I hope you are sleeping. Or at least on some sort of normal schedule. In honor of Joey, and our passion picks, we have a super awesome giveaway for you today! Let's talk about the dirty a second.

So, as you may have read, our basement flooded along with some leaks in the ceiling. We lost quite a bit of laundry. Bye bye Dwell Studio duvet set. Bye bye Orla Kiley towels. Bye bye pretty clothes and sheets. It's been raining a lot in New York and the water table just couldn't handle it any more. So Joey filled up the shop vac 20+ times to save the basement. He had some questions if the Vac could be used in this fashion and thanks to this awesome Q & A, it was like someone was reading his mind and his questions were answered. 

If you are wondering, yes. The Shop Vac can double as a water pump if your basement floods. Instant gratification at it's finest. Yay community knowledge!

Oh yes. The shop vac. You have saved us so many times. You have made Joey's workshop bearable. You have sucked up so much water and sawdust, I am surprised you are still living to tell the story. We love you. We want to share you with the world. If you don't have one, you need one. It's not a "sexy" tool, but it's been used so often, we deem it product we cant live without #5, to kick start our week of favorite tools giveaways. 

Yep! This week, all week, we will be giving away a favorite item a day to kick start our season of giveaway! Thanks to a wonderful company, StackExchange.com, and their AMAZING Home Improvement vertical, they will be sponsoring all the loot!

What is Stack Exchange? Glad you asked! Stack Exchange is a wonderful place you can go to ask questions and get/give answers. Their Home Improvement/DIY vertical is what I suspect you will get A LOT of use out of. We encourage you to check it out! Get some karma points by answering DIY mysteries or ask a question and get that answer. But right now, get yourself in the game to win a Shop Vac, you have no idea how bad you need one. 

Giveaway info:

• Prize: One (1) Shop Vac with accessories care of Stack Exchange: Home Improvement MSRP $53.49
• How to Enter: Tell us your favorite tool or accessory which helps you get "the job" done! Don't forget to tell us why you love it!
• Extra Entry: Follow @StackDIY on twitter, come back and tell me you did!
• Giveaway Ends: Sunday October 2nd at 9:00pm EST
• How Many Lucky Winners?!: One (1)
• Ships to: US Only
• Also: Please only enter once, with the exception of the extra entry. We select our winners using random.org and will select a winner by October 5th and notify by email, so use a real email address! 

This is going to be moving....

....seriously. We hope you are well and enjoying the last moments of your summer. We are in LA right now making some pretty large life decisions. Even though nothing is set in stone, we thought it was about time we clue you in why so few home-y blogs have been posted and where things are going with it. If you are at all behind, I will provide a blitz style catch up!

We bought a house two years ago this October:

We fell in love with her. We dedicated every weekend to her. She was our thirty year plan. We work from her, entertain from her, and adore coming home to her when we are away. Heck, we changed our wedding blog into a house blog the second we bought her! Love. Serious love. 

The Job Market Went Wonky:

Joey writes music for TV and movies, which isn't the easiest work to get in NYC, you have to be in LA. In NYC he gets lots of commercial work, which is awesome, but he really enjoys working on all of the above.

I said there was NO WAY we were moving to LA.

Then, this past Winter happened. Then the earthquake. Then the tornado. Then the emotional exhaustion. Then I said, let's move to LA. So we made plans to in January 2012.

Then I met this lady:

She already lives in LA. She has a pretty sweet show (you should totally watch), Secrets from a Stylist. And I totally dig what she's doing. So I had some business ideas. So we started moving on The Holiday Guide and opening an Interior Design Firm. And the plan is for me to move to LA a bit before Joey.

I am already home sick. But excited.

So right now we are life planning in LA until we sort this all out. I am craving a DIY project like nobodies business. I may just have to get to work on my friends apartment. Also the blog will have to change into a savvy renters blog until we find a home we love, which by the way, is really hard in LA. Harder than NYC it seems. In the mean time before we get all savvy renter, and house crash-y, you may notice a lot more giveaways on the blog, moodboards, ideas for smaller spaces and outdoor living. I shy away from the blog when I have nothing to say, then I realized not just home owners read our blog, but renters too. So this is going to be good. Promise. 

And for all those who have already asked: We are not selling the house. We would like to rent it, but not selling her. She's part of the family. 

Next week is a WHOLE WEEK OF GIVEAWAYS! It's our favorite products we have used to make our house a home. Check it out. You might just win a little something.