On Fridays

I recently decided to add two new blog features on CLH, both will happen on Fridays, both will start today. As you know from time to time, I share little tidbits of whats going around on casa that's unrelated to DIY or Home Decor. Recently I've shared that we Cut The Cable Cord, and that I make Avery Homemade Baby Food. With that in mind, I've decided to share more of our everyday life on Fridays. Some Fridays it will be a quick week recap, so I don't forget the small special (and not so special) moments that happened during our week. One thing I love about blogging is you create this online journal, that helps you remember all those little details. Other Friday's I'll share ways we we save money, like cutting coupons and craft projects I'm working 
on .


The other Friday blog feature on CLH, will be may favorite 'Pin' of the week, like so many of you I'm hooked on Pinterest, I love seeing pretty inspirational images and fun DIY projects. Every Friday afternoon, starting today I'll share my 'Pin of the Week'. I hope you enjoy these two new blog features, I think this will help me blog more about what's going on :) Monday though Thursday will be all about DIY & Decor projects, so there will be more consistent posts for you to read about during the week. From now on I'll be pumping out more posts and keeping the content good, so its a good thing. 


Now for today's post. Early Tuesday morning, like crazy early since the time change just happened, I walked past our entryway into our kitchen, then I heard a large crash! I ran back in the room to see one of our frames shattered all over our floors. There was broken glass everywhere! Only one frame broke, the smaller frame was fine. The large frame was from Ikea so an very cheap to replace. Looks like I'll be heading to Ikea soon, to buy a frame (lol, I'm sure I'll buy more than one frame) This is how our entryway currently looks. Crazy enough this is the first frame we've lost since I built the shelves. 

Avery loves to look at books and loves being read to at night. I think his favorite book is Ten Little Lady Bugs. Have you read it? I love this book, it was also a favorite of Tabari's. Counting books are fun. Oh, our little guy is getting his two top front teeth this week! We are so shocked, because he didn't get tooth # 2 until right before he turned nine months old. Now at 9 1/2 months two teeth in one week. Craziness. 

Don't you love when packages arrive? I'm getting a head start on planning Avery's first birthday party, details to come very soon. I ordered his envelopes from Paper Source, I love their envelopes, and they had the perfect shade of chartreuse. The closest Paper Source to be is in Berkeley which is an way over an hour away and with gas prices starting at $ 4.22 a gallon, I'll gladly pay $6 bucks for shipping.  

I'm loving the newest issue ofr Country Living, thier teaching me how to garden. This year we will have a garden! Next weekend, we will make it happen. I'm still shocked I only paid $5 for a year subscription just a few months ago. 

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I was super happy to come home to the yummy smell of slow cooker red beans. MY and my slow cooker have become BFFs the last few months, we are tight! lol, I slow cooker at least 3 times a week. It really makes my work week so much easier. As promised here's the link to the recipe I used from All Recipes.com. Click HERE I left out the Ham hock and jalapeno. I also DID NOT sock my beans overnight like the recipe recommends. Why not? Well slow cooker is on steroids, seriously she cookers everything faster then its supposed to. So even though I skipped soaking my beans, they still came out amazing. But I did sort my beans, and did not add any salt until after I got home from work. My mom watches Avery for us daily in our house, and added the sausage a few hours into my beans cooking, which is how I wanted it to be done. Thanks mom! 

My cornbread is was good. I use plain old Jiffy, and just add in graded cheese to keep the cornbread moist while its cooking in the oven. Personally I cannot stand dry crumbly cornbread, its just a pet peeve of mine. I wanna make cornbread from scratch, since I have all the ingredients. Maybe this weekend I will, but on weekdays I prefer the ease of the 'Blue Box.' Again please click here for the Recipe

I hope everyone had a good week.

Every had anything break around your house with no explanation? Is gas getting crazy expensive where you live? Are you a fan of slow cooker meals?

DIY Tools

Whenever we tackle a DIY project around our house both big { Painting our Entire House, Laying Sod, Refinishing our Hardwood Floors } and small { Painting a Mirror, Re-doing a Bench }  I try and make sure we already have the tools we need to start the project, or what tools we need to buy. Nothing is worse then being in a midst of a project and realizing you have to make a trip to the local Home Improvement store, because popping into those stores its never a in out and thing. Soon we will starting to work on our built-in bookcase for our living room { read more about that here } and I wanted to make sure when have the majority of tools needed and what we need to buy. This made me think about DIY tools that are a must, when your a Beginner DIYer, Intermediate DIYer and Going Pro DIYer 

Beginner DIYer Tools

The basics will help you make over that thrift store dresser in no time 

Beginner Tools:

Philips and Flat Head Screwdriver, Good Paint Brush { I prefer Purdy Paintbrushes } Painters Tape, Large & Mini Paint Roller { keep extra rollers on hand } extra , Hammer, Metal Tape Measure { at least 20ft } 3Ft Level, Caulk & Wood Filler, KILZ Primer & Stain-blocker, Sand Blocks, and TSP. Its's always good to have extra screws, nails, and sanding blocks on hand. 

Intermediate DIYer Tools

This is where your start adding a little power to your tool box to get the job done a little faster 

Intermediate Tools:

Jig Saw, Power Drill, Skill Saw, Miter Saw, Power Sander { keep various grit and papers on hand the lower the girt Number the more it sands, the higher number sanding paper is for finishing } Wet Dry Vacuum, Metal ladder and Saw Horses and Kreg Jig Master 

Going Pro DIYer Tools 

This tools are great when you start tackling larger projects. I'm skipping over the big pricey power tools { Floor Sanders, Paint Sprayer because you can always rent those }

Going Pro Tools:

Air Compressor with attachments, Table Saw, Router and Grinder 

Since we bought our home three years ago, we've bought all the Basics tools and used then all many times. The basic tools you will use over and over again. We have most of the Intermediate tools, we buy what we need, when we need it. 

Our next tool purchase will be a small air compressor with attachments, oh how I want a brad nailer! lol 

What tools are you wanting to add to your tool box?

We Cut the Cable Cord

For the past six months Hasani and I have been discussing whether should cancel our Dish Network and nix cable altogether. Well, we did just that, we are officially cable free as of 2/9/12. Don't get me wrong we love TV and watching our favorite TV shows together or a part is weekly/nightly must in our household. But, because there's always a but right. 

Bah Bye, dust collector 

There's a few reasons why we decided to end our relationship with cable. We no longer watched very much 'live' TV, I'll explain more further in the post. We had over 120 channels, but we hardly found anything to watch on the channels. We got tired of all the re-runs, most stations would play the same 3-4 episodes over and over again. Yes, I'm talking about you Food Network, DIY Network and so on. Out of the 120 Channels, we maybe watched 15 of them and only we then didn't have excessive repeats. We also experienced frequent outages with our provider. Hasani got tired of being the designated cable 'troubleshooter' in the house. We also got annoyed when our DVR would record a show / movie and we'd watch it and it parts of the show failed to record! 
The last draw for me came 2/5/12 Sunday evening, when our DVR failed to record my show Downton Abbey. How dare they! So the next morning I added up the costs we where paying for cable. Our 120 channels cost $ 24.99, but of course there were additional fees that increased our total to $ 40.00 per month. Not bad considering I have family and friends who play double that amount monthly. However, when I looked at the yearly dollar amount, the total is $ 480.00. We are paying $ 480.00 yearly for a service we almost never watch. I'm so over paying for stuff we don't need or don't use. 


So now comes the questions. 


What did our Tween say?


When we told broke the news to Tabari about being a cable free family, he was a little bummed. He loves watching Nick and Disney. But he can't watch TV during the school week anyways. In the end two days of the week of not being able to watch new episodes Phineas & Ferb is not a huge deal. He can still watch the show, more on that below. 


Are we going to be a TV Free household? Are we still going to watch TV?


Before I cut the cable cord, I did some research on DTV.gov. I wasn't sure if we'd need to buy a converter box to watch free TV ( ABC, NBC, Fox etc ) turns out that only applies to analog TV's and since the two TVs we own are newer we don't have to buy anything extra to watch the free channels. On Wednesday night 2/8/12, Hasani unplugged our DVR, plugged our TV directly into the cable wall outlet and did a scan, and 20 free channels appeared. Most of our new channels are in HD and I can already see a big improvement in the quality (we didn't have HD before, that was an additional cable fee, of course) I noticed a few channels seem glitchy, but they're not channels I normally would watch, so that's OK. Oh another cool thing is this American Girl, now gets to watch the Canadian TV show  Steven And Chris! I never got to watch it before, now I do for free :)


Remember when I mentioned we don't watch much live TV? That's because most { 80% } of our TV viewing is watched though the Roku player. Hasani's dad gave him this great little device as a birthday present a few years back. I think we've had the Roku Player about 2 1/2 years. I call it the gift that keeps on giving. For those of you that haven't heard of a Roku, its a device that steams TV, Movies, Music and lots of other content into your TV using its built in WiFi. So you need to have Internet to use the device. You subscribe to different channels, some are a small monthly fees and some are free, just depends. The Roku only costs one time, when you buy the device that's it no monthly service fees. I hated the annoying service fee, we payed each month on DVR - that failed to record. It plugs in super easy just like your DVD player. 

We subscribe to several channels and only pay for two. We subscribe to Netflix instant ( I love Netflix, been a loyal customer forever, like 5+ years) and Hulu. Netflix costs us $ 15.98 for unlimited streaming and 1 Dvd at home at a time. You can also watch Netflix instant on your computer or even your phone. We pay $ 7.99 monthly for Hulu,  we watch movies and TV shows. You can also watch Hulu online for free! We also subscribe to these free channels: Flixster { for movie previews, I also have the app on my phone } Crackle, and Pandora. I love listening to my favorite music channels on Pandora. If we want to rent movies, we visit Redbox or rent a movie on Amazon.com. The Amazon rentals stream right though our Roku player and most new releases cost $3.99 or $ 4.99 for HD and are available to view for 24 hours. The cost much cheaper than pay-per-view and quicker than going to Blockbuster, which is pretty much extinct where I live in Sacramento. 

At home we have the movie 'Something Borrowed' to watch this weekend. 

How Netflix Instant appears on our TV screen. There are thousands & thousands of movies and TV Shows to watch at any time. 

Our channel lineup on the Roku Player 

So now that we've cut the cord officially, I guess you can say we've weaned ourselves off of cable thanks to the Roku player. I'm so glad were getting rid of the bulky DVR from Dish network, which is a good thing because we don't have to stress about it fitting in our bookcases we are building soon (since the DVR is deep) 


Now were only spending $ 287ish bucks a year on TV versus paying over $ 480.00 a year on cable alone. Oh, we are considering paying additional $ 79.00 a year to become Amazon Prime members. Because we'll be able to watch over 15,000 TV shows w/our Roku and get free 2 day shipping and have access to a whole bunch of books for my kindle. So if we decide to get Amazon Prime, I'll let you know if its worth it { or too similar to Netflix } most of the content needs to be different for it to be a go. It feels so good to save money on smoothing that no longer works for our household. 

Do you have a cable? Love it, Hate? Are you considering cutting the cable cord like we have? 


Any questions about our decision to quit cable?


Bonus question: Do you watch Downton Abbey? I'm hooked, I watched the 1st series (as the Brits call them)  on Netflix instant , it was good! I'm currently watching series two on PBS, I still have one more Episode to watch. 

Favorite Things Gift Swap

I was recently asked by Brandi of Don't Disturb This Groove to Participate in a Favorite Things Blogger Gift Swap. I teamed up with my fellow blogger & friend Summer from the blog Shades of Summer. When I read Brandi's idea, I loved it! How fun to send a few of my favorite things to one of my girlfriends. You can read what I sent to Summer here on her blog.

Here's the letter I received from Summer

Katrina,

Enclosed in your exchange box you will find the following:

Ceramic egg crates: I adore these little guys, I just love the way they dress  up my fridge and eggs. I know you like all things white so I thought these would make you smile and get some use also.

1/2 Yard of bold blue and white fabric: Sine I am not sure if you like the fabric or not. I got half a yard....I figure you could always make some napkins or use the fabric for trim on a pillow if you think it will compliment the decor in your living room.

The item I'm most excited about is the mini Parfait Glasses and the spoons: I had to have these as soon as I saw them and I know you do entertaining from time to time, I thought you may have use for these and I figured that if cannot always get together to enjoy celebrations, at least we can have something alike when we do entertain and we can think of one another.

I certainly hope you enjoy your items....Thanks for always being a great friend to me.

Summer

The fabric & the mini Parfaits glasses, so cute!

I love these ceramic egg crates!! 

Perfection!

I love everything Summer gave me! So thoughtful! I really love the egg crates, I've always wanted some for my fridge! And now, I get to enjoy a pair in my home! I laughed out loud, when Summer said I like all things white! So true, I love love white dinnerware, bake ware, cake stands etc. The fabric is a perfect addition to my fabric stash, I love the bold navy print. I'm looking forward to making a pillow or napkins like she suggested.

My favorite has go to be the mini parfait glasses! They darling and perfect for parties! Makes me want to throw girls night in party at my casa soon, just so I use the petite spoons and serve me friends yummy mini treats. These are a hit!

Everything Summer sent me was so thoughtful, I really loved participating in the favorite things gift swap! :) Check out Brandi's blog here, for the entire list of all the bloggers that participated in the gift swap. Thanks again Brandi! I had so much fun :) 

Crush

Simply put, I have a crush on this Juicy Kindle Cover....you may have seen me 'pin it'

Everyone, have a good weekend! I have lots to do on my project list, so let's hope I get some of them done, so my house we'll be a little more organized and further along its way to becoming more 'us' :)

Do you have any new crushes lately?

Stamped

For the longest time, I've wanted pretty custom address stamps. Even though, we pay most of our bills online. I'm thinking how much we need the address stamp for: Invitations, Mailing Family Pictures, Cards etc. With Avery's first birthday fast approaching, its time for me to order a custom stamp :) 


Here's a few I've been lusting over for quite sometime. The ones I adore have a feeling of modern and classic lines. 

via Etsy Seller Simple & Pretty

via Esty Seller SavetheDate

via Esty Seller SavetheDate

via Esty Seller ForYoo

via Esty Seller ForYoo

I love the pretty wood stamps, but think the more practical route will be going with a self inking stamp. I'm excited to order our address stamp soon, makes me feel like a grown up! lol You know like when you buy your 'real' first sofa, yeah the same feeling. Now I just need to pick the right one :) I'm also going to check out this stamp website 'Rubber Stamps'I found thanks to Pinterest - that lets you create your own stamp, maybe I can get creative and design our address stamp. We shall see.


Do you love custom address stamps? Do you have one? 


ps: I'm also thinking about making a Chic Little House stamp, just because :)

Top Five of 2011

Wow we are officially four days into a New Year!! Last year went by so fast, but I think they all do when you have kiddos and now that we were blessed with a new baby in June I'm sure time will speed up even faster. It's fun to look back over the past year and reminiscence about my favorite fun projects. I decided to stick with my Top Five Projects of 2011 broken down by category, the projects big and small that I had fun doing. From painting to sewing to crafting ( a little) here they are. 

Top Five of 2011

Best Refreshed Furniture Piece


Mid Century Modern Desk
- I love how many purposes this pretty desk has in our home. The dresser holds, our DVDs, board games and even provides a work space. Gotta love a multi-functional piece that we bought for only $ 80 bucks for. All it needed was a little 'PP&P' that's Primer, Paint & Pulls :) Read more about its makeover here.

Best Use of Glossy Spray Paint 


Mirror Makeover
Transforming an old dated mirror I bought at a Thrift Store proved to be easy peasy when I used super glossy Krylon Fusion Spray Paint in Navy. The result a pretty focal point at the end our our hallway. Read more about this project here. 

Best Use of Ribbon

DIY Back Tab Drapes

Who knew Ribbon could be so useful when making back tab style drapes? Ribbon ended up being the perfect solution to make my DIY drapes appear pleated and more polished. You can read my how to here.

Most Fun with Mini Pom Poms 

DIY Giraffe Softies 

I made two darling little giraffes for Avery's nursery, thanks to the help of a pattern I found on Woman's Day. I changed up the pattern just a little bit and added cute mini pom poms for the giraffes mane. I used the same fabric for each giraffe just in a different color. Read more about this sewing project here.

Most Fun with Colored Paper 

Baby Artwork for the Nursery 

I had so much fun transforming color paper into pretty artwork for Avery's nursery. For the artwork below, I used left of dot garland I made for my baby shower and framed it. The dots are varying shades of blue. They look so sweet in his nursery. Check out the other color paper projects I completed here. 

That's my round up for 2011. I'm so looking forward to what this year will bring. The plan for the new year is to work on lots of projects that are both budget friendly to our wallet, but have big impact. I've already finished up my 1st DIY project of the year and will share on Thursday. Oh, and I'm almost DONE with our bathroom update! 

How was your New Years eve, whats you favorite fun project you completed last year?

Relaxing

Hi everyone!! I hope you all had a lovely fun filled holiday with your loved ones! We had a great Christmas spent with our kiddos and family. My posting will be a little spotty until next week. I'm going to take some blog time off to enjoy my family and work on some new projects about our house and on the blog as mentioned in this post a few months back { here } We have a bunch of projects { in progress } we are working on around the house. I hope to get a few done in the next few days, just in time for the New Year. It's hard to believe it will be 2012 in a few days! 

Black Friday Shopping

I hope everyone had a fun relaxing Thanksgiving!! I planned on posting on Monday, but decided to extend the Thanksgiving weekend a little bit longer, I hope you all understand. We didn't do a whole lot of  shopping on Black Friday { we didn't leave our house until after 10am! } talk about late, but got some good deals on a few unexpected items that made us smile. Our first stop on Black Friday was Best buy, we mostly looked around at TVs and CD's but left empty handed, then we headed next door to Target. Oh how I love Target, amazing we only bought one thing a DVD of It's Complicated. I love Meryl Streep and loved the movie and for only $3.99 I gladly took it home with us. Do you remember the amazing kitchen from the movie? 

{ via here }

Next we stopped in Hobby Lobby, its my third time there since my first visit a few weeks back. I picked up a few things for Christmas. Then we headed to Goodwill. I discovered last year that Goodwill has half off days on Black Friday. The Goodwill we popped is was buy, people had cart fulls of items. I was super happy when I spotted a large gold paper mache  reindeer and a mini one. Here's the cute set I bought for only $ 3.50. One of the antlers on the large reindeer needs repair, nothing a little hot glue can't fix.

Hasani thought I was crazy was crazy when he saw me pushing our stroller and carrying a large gold reindeer under my arm. Are you thinking the same thing? I'm planning on spray painting the pair glossy white, which will give them an instant modern look, kind of like the West Elm Paper Mache ones at $100 each. So cool, I only spent a little over three bucks to achieve almost the exact same look.

{ West Elm }



Oh and Z Gallerie also sells deer at $ 129 bucks a pop! The Z Gallerie version is white and glittery. It's much larger in person than the West Elm ones are, more like my deer which is over two feet tall!

Then we gabbed some lunch at Boudin SF, they have the yummiest bread ever! I love eating there, especially on a brisk sunny Friday afternoon. Too cute Daddy and Baby matched! Grey on Grey. After lunch we popped in Anthorpoligie, sorry no pictures, I just browsed, because I really wanted to go to West Elm. It's my new favorite store. 

I love West Elm's clearance section, so many goodies!! I took my time and looked though all the bins, they have a ton of pillow covers on sale and tons of dishes. 

I found two pretty green pillow covers, that I'd seen online and didn't think much of until I saw them in person. The green is so pretty and the circle dot print it subtle and delicate it adds a nice textural pattern against the green fabric. I also liked that the back of the pillow closure was done in brown buttons. I bought two pillow on clearance for $ 9.99 each. I also grabbed an egg shaped greige vase, they were only  bucks can't beat that. Do you remember the bathroom hook that I was hoping to buy that matched the Textured Bath Hardware I bought for a steal { each piece was only $ 1.99! } I found the hook in the store for $ 4.99, so I didn't complain. 

I made a few more updates to our living room in the next couple of days. I'm in love with all the changes. It's all coming together so nicely, and I love how the green pillows look in our space. It's feeling more finished & polished. Oh and we did buy one more item from West Elm, it had to be shipped so when it arrives, I'll share. Lastly we popped into Kmart on a whim and I stopped in their Home Improvement section and bought four cans of white glossy Krylon paint for a $ 1.00 each!! They where on clearance so I bought all the the stock they had left! A girl can never have enough white glossy spray paint. I already stared using a can on the picture frame { new artwork for the living room } I'm going to spray paint both the deer today! 

So that was our day out Shopping Black Friday sales, I'm so happy we popped into various stores and picked up a few items on the cheap that made us happy. You know I love a bargain!

Did you go Black Friday Shopping, and great finds? Where you an early bird or did you get a late start like we did, but still scored a few good deals?