Gorgeous jewelry giveaway!

**This giveaway is now closed.

One of my favorite bloggy people is Beki at Pampering Beki. She is such a sweet person and blogger. She makes some beauuutiful jewelry to boot. :)

Beki has some gorgeous new pieces I can’t wait to show you! The first is an ornament I just absolutely love. I know it’s because I’m in the Christmas clouds right now, but it just makes me smile:

What a sweet way to remember the holiday – maybe this year was the year your first baby was born – or your last. ;) We got married near Christmas, so if I had seen this years ago, I would have snatched it up! And you won’t believe the price – only $20!! What a great gift idea!

I love that no one else on Earth will have a necklace just like yours, because Beki will customize it for your family:

I think I will do this one with our four initials – maybe hubby and I on the outside, the kids in the middle. I’m checking with Beki on that one. ;)

OK you Twilight freakedy freaks – get ready to squeal. (Plugging ears.):

I guess this is a good saying for Twilight, yes? Shhhh….I still haven’t read them! Wait, what is that sound? Oh yes, it’s my Stink Eye sister harassing me from across town to read them already!! I will, I swear! Soon. In a few months. Or a year. I will.

I love the mix of the stones on this one, and I adore the words she used:

Beki also creates other beautiful pieces like these:

And that’s not it – there’s also gorgeous hair clips, kid’s jewelry and brooches:

I have one of Beki’s necklaces and wear it all. the. time. I adore it:

I wore it today, yes I did. Here's me at 11:30 p.m. wearing the beautiful necklace, taking a picture in our laundry room because it's the only room with good "picture taking" light. Ha!

Beki has graciously offered one of you her “Believe” necklace:

Perfectly fitting for this time of year.

You know the deal! To be entered to win this sweet necklace, leave a comment here this weekend. To get a second entry, visit Pampering Beki and browse her items to find your favorite. Come back here to let me know which one you love!

The giveaway will close at noon Eastern time on Monday the 23rd! (Can you even BELIEVE Monday is the 23rd?!)

A glam christmas table

OK, a few things before I start this post. I’m writing this one in Live Writer for the first time ever, and holy canoly, it’s freaking awesome! I love how easy this is to work with, and that it’s so easy to change and move photos! So this post may look a little different. (Let me know if it works OK for you!)

Second – YES, it’s a Christmas post. YES, I am decorating now. Well, this is the first of it, but hold on to your seats folks! I am loving the little bits of magic appearing in our house. I used to be the girl who groaned when I saw Christmas stuff inching it’s way out to the stores so early. But over the years, my glee at the sight of the decor grows more and more. I am quite sure this is due to our almost three-year-old. He is positively GIDDY, and it’s rubbing off. ; )

Because we aren’t hosting Thanksgiving this year, I figured I would go ahead and tackle the dining room, just because I’m excited to decorate it for the holidays with the new look.

I had the decor in my head, but I stopped midway when I found new inspiration at Goodwill, of all places. I got a small tub full of ornaments in the most gorgeous colors – colors I’ve never used for Christmas decor. They were sparkly coffee brown, creamy latte and copper tones and I fell. in. love.

So the new table was born in my head. : )

First, I started with my greenery. Greenery is my addiction this time of year. I’m not even kidding peeps, you’ll probably see it in every post for the next six weeks. I would fry it up and eat it for breakfast if I could. LURVE.

I just cut it apart with my wire cutters and stuffed it here and there so it filled in the empty spots on the centerpiece:

If you are new to these parts, you can see how I created the centerpiece here. : )

Then, I just filled it with the metallic ornaments here and there:

The shiny ornaments are looking gold in the pics, but they are really a gorg copper color. (You can also see me contorting myself to get a good picture in the reflection. Ha!)

I added some pine cones I had in my Christmas decor stash:

I had spray painted them with my caramel latte spray paint:

It is a loverly color. It just screams Christmas.

I gave the votive holders a tiny bit of bling by brushing on just a bit of glaze, then sprayed them with gold glitter spray:

It gives them look of strie, which I love.

I finished off the table with massive sparkly ornaments from Hob Lob in each bowl:

The ornaments were two per package, half off…so about $10 for all of them. The ornaments in the centerpiece were $7 at Goodwill, but I have a ton left I plan to use elsewhere. The rest of the items I had.

My obligitory night time shot:

I am SO thrilled with how it turned out. Simple, but glam. Sigh. (I just realized every picture I decided to use is from this same angle -- sorry about that! Must be it's "good" side.)

The longest part of this project was waiting for the paint to dry on the votives and pine cones. Putting the rest of it together took about 20 minutes. Easy peasy Squeeeezaaaays!!

Has the Christmas decorating bug bitten you yet?

How to test for lead.

I know, bor-ring topic! But this is pretty important to know, and it's sooo easy to do, so I figured I would share. I received a comment back on my post on fall decor about the plates I bought from Goodwill that concerned me. The reader mentioned the dishes were recalled years ago for possible lead content. By the way, YES, I read every comment and love them. ;)

Well, there are a few things that freak me out -- and lead is one of them. Especially with a little man in the house. Eek! I usually have a lead testing kit handy around here -- I've used them a few times over the years.

Although our crib was brand new, when the Bub started gnawing on it like it was a chew toy, out came the lead test. When every. single. toy. seemed to have lead in it, out came the lead tests. You can test just about any product for lead content. First, check out your home improvement store and look for this package:
I usually find them near the paint section. I think this kit was about $5, and you can get two tests out of each swab, as long as you do the tests within two minutes:

When I did some research on the recalled plates, I read that if there are any chips to check that area for lead especially. Because I chipped this bowl pretty much as soon as I got it home (fists shaking in air!), I figured I would check that, as well as the bowl.

After the swab is activated, just squeeze the fluid onto the item you're testing:

The instructions say to wait for 30 seconds or so, but in my experience, the immediate result is the result. Both the surface of my bowl and the chipped area were negative, whew. (Meaning no color change.) The sites I found about the recall didn't have pictures of any of the recalled sets, but it did mention the lead leached when the plates were heated. I plan on sticking this in the microwave for a bit to test it again just to make sure.

Since I could get two tests out of the one swab, I figured I would check out an antique architectural piece I got a while back as well. I was pretty sure there was lead in the piece, due to it's age. I was right -- it started out light:

And got darker with time:

The swab will turn as well as the item:

According to the test, the darker the color, the more lead -- this was a dark pink, not red. So it's not a ton of lead, but enough that I put it up high on a plant shelf so none of us will touch it. (The pink on this one did not come off, so beware of that.)

Especially with the holidays coming up, it is worthwhile to have a test around, just in case. It's quite possible some older or antique Christmas decor has lead in it. Obviously, even items with lead in them aren't necessarily harmful if left alone and aren't handled often -- for adults. Anything babies or children can get to are fair game. ;)

It's cheap to do and too easy not to!

My button is fixed -- take it with you if you like! (See left.)

Christmas decor is coming yet this week...IT'S ON!!

Comment love, a winner and announcements.

WOWZA peeps -- that was a HUGE response to the Scribble It giveaway. That was FUN! :) The winner (I feel like I need a drumroll for this one!) is...

Kat at Measuring my life in love

Yippee Kat! Please email me and I'll connect you with Cammi.

I have a humongo favor to ask of you all! My son's nursery was featured on Design Dazzle awhile back and has been chosen as a Design Dazzler and one of the top ten posts on Toni's blog. If you haven't seen it before, here is my favorite room in our house: Oh I love it so. :) If you have a few seconds, I would really appreciate your comment here at Design Dazzle. The comments are open through this Friday at 1 p.m. Pacific time and the post with the most comments wins some awesome stuff. (No signing up necessary, you can just comment like you do here.)

If you do comment -- YOU will be entered to win a total of $500 in prizes and gift certificates as well! (Three commenters on all of the nominee posts will share the prize.) You can't beat that! All of this is to celebrate Design Dazzle's first "birthday" -- if you haven't visited this site, you must. It is the place to find fantastic baby and kid room ideas. (Click on the button below to get to Design Dazzle.) There is a huge giveaway going on right now, so check it out!

I'm so pleased to announce my friend Kimba at A Soft Place to Land has created an ebook filled with fantastic Christmas decor ideas!:

You’ll find over 180 photos and 72 pages of detailed, step-by-step instructions for five new Christmas projects for your home and gift giving. Check it out by clicking on the button above to get to Kimba's site. This ebook is good -- I've seen it! :)

And finally, I hope you'll join me for my Second Annual Christmas Tree Party on Monday, December 14th!

The code for this cutie button is on the fritz, we're working on it. I hope to get this going soon, so you'll be able to copy it to your site. If you want to get some inspiration for this year's party, check out the links from last year here. Gorgeous!

Yippee, yippee, I'm so ready to decorate for Christmas now! I was ready weeks ago, then I was OK to hold off a bit, now I'm raring to go! First project I'm tackling -- the dining room table. It's going to be sooooo beauuuutiful! (That's the plan anyway.) Stay tuned!

Sunday night.

It's about 10:15 and we're finally settled for the evening. A load of laundry is going, the football game is on, the Bub is back in bed for the third (!!) time tonight. ;)

Most Sunday nights, I try to do a few things to make the start to our week a little less stressful. It's not much, and it's not so much organizing us for the week as it is clearing our minds of clutter.

Some Sundays I do more than others, but most I do my best to do a few things, so when we walk up the stairs for bed tonight, we leave a fairly clean space behind us. And Monday morning when we walk down the stairs and are greeted with that decluttered space, it makes a BIG difference in how we start the day.

Oh yeah, and it stays like this for about 15 minutes into Monday morning, but it still is important to me. ;)

I clear the island and kitchen table of the clutter that piles up during the week:
I do my best to put it all away, but even if some of it is just placed out of sight, that's OK. Walking into the kitchen Monday morning with clean surfaces makes me feel like I can breathe.

I make sure there are no dishes in the sink. I try to wipe it down as well, but if I can at least get it cleared out, that's good enough for me most Sundays:
The sink is fairly clean tonight -- I mean, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know sometimes I clean up before pics, sometimes I don't. I wasn't about to put a nasty sink out there for y'all to see. No way Joe-say.

I love the hum of the dishwasher. It is a relaxing sound to me for some reason -- probably because it's the sound of technology doing the work for me, and that ROCKS:
I put away as many toys as I can:

By putting away toys I mean, throw them in any bin, bucket or container possible so for one evening we aren't endangering our lives by walking around them. :)

I'm pretty good at keeping things off these stairs, but as I pick up on Sunday evenings, I tend to stack. By the end of the night, I need to have every. single. thing. gone so when I walk up for the final time, there's nothing left for me to worry about:

I try to vacuum the main areas like our family room and kitchen:

That way the tufts of fur and crumbs can start fresh on Monday morning. Nice.

And as I sit and blog, the coffee table is cleared, even if it means everything is just thrown into the basket:

Have I mentioned baskets rule?

Not all of these things happen every Sunday evening. And I only focus on the living areas on our main floor. Sometimes I do more, sometimes much, much less. But even if it's a clean sink or coffee table, it changes my outlook on Monday morning.

Starting the week with a clean slate is what starts my week with a clear head. What do you do to prepare for the week?

You can enter the awesome vinyl art giveaway till tomorrow (Monday) at noon Eastern time. And ummmm...900+ comments? That is craaaayzay! Wowza. Good luck!

Fantastic vinyl giveaway!

**This giveaway is now closed!

Well this is a good one folks. (Aren't they all?) I can't wait to share my latest fab giveaway with you!

Although it's supposed to be an unlucky day today, it's going to be a great one for one of you Squeezies! Cammi at Scribble It has graciously offered one of YOU a gift card for her vinyl products!

You know I love the vinyl -- I use it all over the place. The great thing about these items is you can use them anywhere. A mirror, a frame, the possibilities are endless. You can definitely use this product even if you are renting -- put them on a board and hang it with a ribbon, for example. These are a few of my favorites...

Look! Squeal! This is so similar to my laundry room vinyl! I get so many questions about it, so here. you. go.

I think these hanging utensils would be so stinkin' fun on the backsplash in a kitchen:

(And you can get them in silver, so you are set.)

OK, I couldn't let this post get by without including some adorable little owls. I mean, seriously. Look at the one with the flower in her hair:

I have a thing for the vinyl dandelions. If you got this one, I would spread these out over a whole wall:

Have you seen those vintage prints with the red bicycle? How fun with this bicycle built for two be on a large board, all distressed and hung on a wall?:

I love simple embellishments like this one:

This one may go on our mantel. I have been trying to find the perfect, skinny, simple vinyl to put in a spot there. This would look fab in the spaces above windows and doors too. What a great accent! And it's less than $4 for a 22-inch wide vinyl -- that's fantastic.

This one is for the front door, but instead of just putting it up for one season, try it in red, on a white, distressed board, hung on the front door from a gorgeous, thick ribbon:

That way, you can use it every year. ;)

If you have or want beadboard in your bathroom, then your bathroom is calling out for this one:

Doesn't it look like it would work perfectly?

Lastly, I LOVE this -- put it on a board, then attach the board to the wall with hinges:

I mean, this is just fun, that's all I'm sayin'. :) It's the perfect time to buy for the holidays too -- orders will be shipped within two to five days! That's fast enough for my impatience, and you know that's hard to do. Cammi also has a great photo gallery where you can see many of the items in color, in real homes.

To be entered for a $25 gift card towards any purchase at Scribble It -- custom or otherwise -- you know the drill! Leave a comment here this weekend. For a second entry, check out Cammi's site here, find one of your favorites, then come back to leave another comment with that one. (You may need to wait a sec for each page to load.)

If you post anonymously, please make sure to leave an email and name so I know who you are if you win! This giveaway will close at noon (pacific time) on Monday, the 16th.