Monday, Bloody Monday

Mornin' super lovlies! Just a quick reminder, today is your LAST chance to enter the give-away! Two Hundred Smacker from MirrorMate.com - pretty sweet, so hop to it before it's too late! We will also be hosting an excited new give-away very soon, for you art lovers hint, hint. 

So how was your weekend? Were you like us and totally ignored your growing to-do list? Or did you kill it this weekend and do more than humanly possible? We did a lot of day dreaming of what we wanted to accomplish, but in reality we cracked open the windows and spent half the weekend in bed. This is very rare for us. If you want a peek into the typical life of Joey and Lana "taking the weekend off", here ya go:

• Washed and Trimmed Rocket
• Met with the Tax guy, and left severely depressed about what we owe 
• Booked tickets to LA
• Cleaned the floors down stairs
• Washed the bath mats
• Planned out the office design once and for all
• Started brainstorming the garden room design
• Went to a friends house for dinner
• Watched Alice in Wonderland, Chloe, and a Beatles documentary 
• Made smoothies
• Walked the dogs

Bored yet? Haha. We won't leave you hanging there. The interesting part is fleshing out my office, which has turned storage room this winter.  Here's the plan.

We found paint! We love the paint we found very very much! We wish we knew about this paint before we started painting out bedroom, but we are super happy we found it before we painted the rest of our home. Lesson learned. Why's loving this new paint to exciting? Umm...there is really good primer mixed in with the paint. It comes in a million colors. It cuts time in HALF. True Value just released EasyCare Platinum, and it's the new winner for all of our indoor paint moving forward. 

If you go to TrueValuePaint.com, you can use their super handy tools, like we did to help select your paint. We have been drooling over this Natural Riverbed for a long time, and had many discussion of where it would look best in our home. Right now the office is a bit....yellow. 

As you can see the office (aka storage room) is in some need of TLC and clearing it out and painting it will do wonders for a new and fresh feel. And instead of just a simple paint job (Why would we keep anything simple?) We are pretty set on using this stencil from CuttingEdgeStencils.com, check her out!

Can you see it? We had to spend half a day in bed visualizing it. Yep, that's what we are telling ourselves. 

So our unproductive/productive weekend got us pumped up at the end of the day to start a new room. A mix of fancy damask + farmhouse chic will be the road we start with for my office, who knows where it will end. 

Hey there! We hope you like all the give-aways going on at MAHAH! We are excited to host them! Just a reminder, we don't get paid to host give-aways and we didn't get paid to write this post about True Value or MirrorMate.com or CuttingEdgeStencils.com - we just really like their products and feel excited about sharing things that work for us. 

Oh yea! If you are super prepared like me, check out our post over at Yahoo! A sample of our emergency kits, just in case disaster strikes. 

True Value Blog Squad: This Chapter is over

When True Value gave us the goal of accomplishing new and fresh ideas for our readers using their products, we couldn't help but be inspired. We pushed ourselves into building a bed, a screen door, revamping and creating new lamps, and even got over the fear of painting the fireplace! It was a good journey with nine other talented bloggers. I was actually lucky enough to meet Kate from Centsational Girl, when she graciously invited me to the Nate Show with her. All in all it was the perfect DIY venture to join, and we are eternally grateful for it! With no further ado, a break down of projects we couldn't have done without True Value, and some "extra footage" we never shared, and some awesome projects from other Blog Squadders!

Favorite Blog Squad Posts: 

Kate from Centsational Girl makes a boring credenza beautiful!

Layla over at The Lettered Cottage literally accomplished a whole ROOM!

We are so stoked to have finished a King Sized Bed:

....a Screen Door to the Mudroom, which I am obsessed with....

...and not to mentions our final mudroom makeover......

....and another project, which we are endlessly happy with...our fireplace facelift!

These are just a few of the things we did as part of the True Value Blog Squad, and we are super stoked we were able to finish so many projects, and kick start others! You can check out all the projects all the Blog Squadders did by clicking here. 

TRUE VALUE BLOG SQUAD CHALLANGE - A BED FIT FOR A KING! The Final Chapter!

Drum roll please!!!! The day has come where we are actually sleeping on our brand spankin' new King size bed we made from scratch! I can't believe we finished this massive project. I cried. I actually cried the moment it was complete. Half out of pure frustration of the time it took, and half because I am so proud Joey was able to make the most beautiful bed! Behold (along with the glorious mess we made) the bed!

Now, this bed is HUGE. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. It's massive. See the pillars behind it? Those are 7+ ft. tall. We had to inch it over into position, 3 inches at a time. It's very rewarding to have finished, and we want to share how we completed this project!

We wanted some dark wood feet, so we bought raw feet from True Value and just stained them. A lot of the prep work for the bed can be found here, here, and here, including the feet. After they were stained we added them to the body Joey constructed.

For Christmas, I got Joey some new tools, which came in very handy while constructing the bed. The compressor I got him is super portable and he loves all the attachments you can get. For the bed the nail gun got used most.

After attaching the feet, all that was left to do was assemble the whole darn thing. First we attached the headboard, then attached the wings to the "back" of the headboard. We used the nailgun to secure the back to the headboard and some hinges to secure the wings. As you can see, we were super excited to see it all coming together.

To keep the mattress sturdy, we nailed down some "ladder" pieces to support the mattress. We used clamps to make sure it was all straight. We also numbered the pieces so when we reassembled, we knew it would be a perfect fit.

We would like to say it was easy, but it wasn't. It was in challenge, but it is also an awesome reward. We made a bed from scratch. Our biggest DIY furniture project to date! We got exactly what we wanted, except now - we need to find a King size mattress we agree on! Let's check her out one more time!