Wu-Hoo!

I wonder how many of the 19 bloggers who Brizo had join them for fashion week titled their blog post the very same thing. I was not one of the 19 amazing and deserving bloggers to group this past week, however I was given the invitation to the #BrizoFW after party. I was stoked. Just a few short months ago the fine people at Delta invited Joey and myself to join with eight other bloggers in Indiana to learn more about Delta, Brizo, their products and their people. We work with a lot of companies on various project, but these guys kinda took a piece of our hearts. Seriously an exceptional group of people producing seriously beautiful and useful products. At this time they mentioned the amazing Fashion Week events they have held and I was just about drooling. Jason Wu designs. for their Brizo line and together they make magic happen. Look, here he is:

He's a funny guy. So creative. So young. Gotta love him. The event was held at a penthouse in NYC, and was super fun. Jason got to see his show (just hours before) from the view of the audience, answered some questions, and made us laugh. Additionally the challenge Brizo gave the bloggers were presented by the designers, and winners were selected. 

Guess who won? Yep. Miss turban wearing Emily Henderson and her team. She's making brassy classy people. 

Not too far behind, Tyler's team came in second. 

It looks like everyone had a really great week! Big up's to Delta/Brizo for throwing a successful event, yet again!

I Miss You, So I am Making Up For It...

Dear Blog, I miss you. I miss running to you every moment I successfully complete a project. I miss being silly with you. I miss reading comments and keeping track of what we get done around here. I am sorry. You see, life has been kind of insane - I can't believe it myself. My basement flooded. My ceiling is leaking in two rooms,  my sewing machine broke twice while working on the guest room curtains, I had this really long road trip which I wanted to tell you all about, but when I got back I had a lot of work to do on Emily Henderson's Holiday Guide. Then I simply couldn't miss out at the amazing Brizo event with incredible designers and Jason Wu. I feel shameful because I have cheated on you with Twitter a lot these past days. Did I forget to tell you I am moving to LA in 48 hours? Oh yea....That's kind of a big one. Please forgive me. I promise to come back and tell you all about it. Like cross my heart, hope to die type of promise. 

My guilt is taking over, and I would feel much better If I could share something that makes me happy and has assisted with tackling some of our problems around here. So keep reading because there is a story and a pretty sweet giveaway laced in these words.

Joey and I drove to St. Paul for his cousin's wedding (I will post all about that soon), and when we returned, we came home to this:

Has your ceiling ever had a massive zit? Yea. Gross. So while trying to figure out how that got there, and what is may be filled with (spiders? water?), Joey was the smarty pants and suggested the gutters may be overflowing and the water built up and pushed itself into our dining room ceiling. The gutter was gross, so he asked to use my 3M Tekk Painters Gloves, and which I grudgingly agreed. I love those babies because they kept my manicure clean while painting the guest room and didn't make my hands feel gross. 

  
 
  

I have now officially given those gloves to Joey because "he needs them more".  I don't know if you remember over a year ago I bought some gardeners gloves I used for everything?....I really love my gloves, I think I am going to steal them back. So after he cleaned out the gross gutters, we decided to pop the zit.

It was water. Better than spiders, but not awesome. So we let it drain, then pealed the paint back and sanded down the area with some 3M sandpaper to make the blemish less depressing. 

As if we didn't have enough going on already, the raw looking paint made me think. Do we have lead in this house? It was built in 1930...

So we Grabbed our trusty 3M Instant Lead Check Kit, and played the roll of detectives a moment. 

With our luck these days, I was pretty sure that the little swap was going to turn red. And if I can be serious for just one second:

Friends. Friends about to have babies, with babies, anyone, even if I don't know you and we haven't spoke: If you live in a place which was built before 1979 DO A LEAD CHECK. I tell everyone I know, seriously. Joey's cousin suffers from a hearty case of autism because her parents were lied to about lead paint in their child's room in a Brooklyn apartment. This is serious stuff people. We did our bedrooms before we moved in. You don't want to be sleeping next to this stuff. It's life changing in the worst way. 

It's SO SO SO easy and quick to do. Buy the kit. Pop the stick. Rub for thirty seconds. Wait to see if it turns red. Done. 

Let's just say we were over the moon happy to see that little swab stay yellow. Do it. Now. 

3M has provided us with a lot of awesome products to test out, and we have been so happy with all of them. We used their Scotch Blue with Edge Lock to make the guest room walls looks crisp and professional while wearing our 3M respirators, their Sandblaster hand-held sandpaper blocks to help fix a huge floor foul, Joey loves the Tekk safety eye ware for when he uses his saw, and of course the painters gloves I am sneaking back. It's stuff you never think to buy, but truly makes a project easier when using quality products meant for the job. You can't DIY safety and efficiency most of the time. 

Even though I say things like "use the stick thingie to rub the wall and see if it turns red" and Joey looks at me like I am a nut bag and asking him to start a fire on the wall, we seem to get things done at the end of the day. Speaking of which...have you been clicking the 3M links above? They will bring you to this magical place where you can win a $250 daily prize, or 2 $5,000 grand prizes to share your silly stories of communication while working on your house. Couples Speak, and you should be one! After all you are kinda sorta special if you are reading this right now, you can totally win. 

Also....we shared how much these products have helped lower our blood pressure over the last few weeks despite the chaos and miscommunication and want to host a giveaway, right here, right now, just for you, the lovely MAHAH reader.

Giveaway info:

• Prize: A prize pack from 3M: 2 3M LeadCheck Swabs, 1 Roll of Scotch Blue, 3 Stages of Sanding (green, maroon, gold sandpaper), 1 gloves, respirator, eye wear 
• How to Enter: Go here and Like the page come back here and give me a funny translation of some DIY miscommunication (real or made up!)
• Extra Entry: Enter the video contest and come back and share. This is for FIVE extra entries!
• Giveaway Ends: Monday September 19th 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 September 25th and notify by email, so use a real email address! 

Another Day, Another Color Story.....

So yea. The guest room....not so much. The fabric I have been waiting on, well, is sold out. If I didn't check I would be waiting a long time. So, I decided to take the hint from the universe and relook at what we were working with and make sure I was making the right decisions. 

It's miles away from the first mood board, back in the day.

And then I changed my mind. Yet again. Welcome, new color story. 

Also, new pattern story. See, I love chevron. I loved it before I even knew it was called chevron. I want to put chevron all over my house. I want blankets. I want to paint it on my floors and dress my curtains in it. But I hate that it's so right now and it's also so last week. You know what I mean? I feel trendy and because it's oversaturated, I am beginning to hate it in my house. I tend to like unpopular things. And the cycle is usually; I like it, and then it's everywhere and I hate it. Except for vegetarianism and veganism. That wound up being very convenient. So I went backwards and made some new decisions.

The yellow and white is Premier Prints Chipper Slub Corn Yellow and the flower print is Amy Butler Lotus Wall Flower Cherry. The super deep teal behind it is our paint from True Value, Natural River Bed. I am happy about them all hanging out and throwing a color party in my guest room. I was getting a bid bored with the spa feeling going on around the rest of the house.

With new changes in textiles comes a little bit of editing. For example the rug (#7) is going to be saved for something else, and the West Elm rug (andalusia) from the kids room is going to takes it's place. Have I ever mentioned how much I love shopping my own home?

The yellow and white fabric will grace the built ins Joey made, while the flower fabric will power the windows. 

Can you see it coming together? I needed to brighten her up a bit and I am really excited about the edits. No more chevron, but total introduction of some fun patterns. Maybe when the trend blows over me and 'ol Chev can take it slow. Go out on a date or two and see how it feels.