Magazine Sale!

I have a serious addiction to glossy magazines, I picked up my habit in high school and it still in full force today. I can't walk past the magazine aisle at the grocery store without spending several minutes on the on the aisle. Even worse than that, I hate tossing them. I keep almost every magazine I've ever bought or subscribed too. When we moved into our house over two years ago, my husband asked 'Do you really need this Marie Claire from 2004' of course my answer was 'YES!' I caved and threw away of ton of magazines, and only kept the good ones. I still love my fashion magazines {I now get most of those from my girlfriend} but my true LOVE is home decor magazines! So I was super excited when I saw the yearly magazine sale on Amazon.com, they have a few home decor magazines on sale for FIVE BUCKS for a year long subscription, they do this annually and its the only time I subscribe. I mean seriously FIVE BUCKS for 12 issues for home decor inspiration, heck ya!


I subscribed to Country Living, Elle Decor & House Beautiful so I got three year long magazine subscriptions for $ 15 bucks talk about a steal!!

When I look early this morning only Elle Decor appeared to still be on sale for only $ 5 bucks!! Don't wait hurry and click over and get your magazine deal! :) There other magazine on sale too for $ 7 bucks and up, you really can not beat the price


Which one are you to subscribe to? Which glossy home magazine do you already get in the mail?


ps: what do you think of the blogs new design? 

Two Years of CLH

Sunday marked two years of me blogging about our beloved little house. It's been fun s-l-o-w-l-y transforming our little rancher into a comfortable spot for my family. We've tackled a bunch of projects and shared the highs and lows of DIY projects. The afters are what keep us plugging along project after project. Over the past TWO years we’ve gained a lot of DIY knowledge, we can know caulk like and expect, know why its so important to prime! Hasani’s become really good at installing light fixtures and dimmers! He’s installed eight light fixtures around our house and trust me he's no where near done yet.

I’ve been sewing up a storm on my hand dandy very simple Singer sewing machine (lots of pillows, drapes, ottoman, and blankets). With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to look back at some projects we completed the past two years, but not just any projects my favorite ones. Here are my top ten favorite projects completed so far { in no particular order }


1. Painting the Front Door Red. I really love how the Posh Red Door color looks against our grey house greets us and our guests. I'm not saying Posh Red just for fun, the paint is really called Posh Red!

2. Reupholstering the Vintage Ottoman. When I came across this less than perfect ottoman, I knew with some new fabric it would look amazing in Avery's nursery. It was a huge challenge of patience and practice to reupholster this ottoman, but so worth. I use this ottoman on a daily basis and the nursery wouldn't be complete without it.

3. Refinishing Our Hardwood Floors. It took us living in our home almost 2.5 years before we got around to refinishing our hardwood floors, and it was worth the wait. My dad and Hasani did an awesome job on transforming our original 1956 Hardwood floors in a dark brown stain that looks great!

4. Sewing Drapes for the Dining Room. Finding this pretty fabric for only a 5.99 a yard was an amazing deal and it truly transformed our overly white dining room into a more lively spot to dine in.

5. Building Ledges for our Entryway. I'm often inspired by Pottery Barn, most of the time not but their prices, after seeing a fellow blogger build some simple ledges inspired by Ikea, I knew I had to build ledges to make our entryway feel more inviting. Since building these ledges, I've also built two for the nursery.

6. Chevron Baby Blanket. I loved this pattern when I came across it and decided to sew a baby blanket with chevron one side and white minky on the other. Now that weather has been cooling off, I've been using it all the time. It's so cute to see Avery snuggles up in a blanket I made for him.

7. Refinishing Tabari's Desk. I bought this desk for $15 a thirft store, it was so much work getting to its after! I even cried becasue I was sanding so much, lol. It was all worth it when I walk by Tabari's room and see him completing his homework on the desk, I redid for him.

8. Painting our Craigslist Dresser. Over the years Craigslist has been good to me. I bought this solid wood dresser with dovetail drawers for only $45! All it needed was new paint and pretty hardware.

9. Installing a Drum Shade Chandelier in our bedroom. I was so called when we got rid the old boob lighting on our bedroom and replaced it with a pretty chandelier I bought from Overstock.com.

10. Making Nursery Artwork. I had so much fun creating this 'artwork' for Avery's room, the colors make me, He's already noticed them while lying in his crib!

It’s fun to take a look back, but even more to think about our future projects we need to complete. We have so many projects on our to do list, that we’ve decided to keep a monthly goal of crossing items off asap. We plan to take on a lot of projects after the kiddos head of to bed. I'll share our project list to do very soon.

My love of blogging has only increased the past two years, along with the loving it now more than ever. We want to improve it, just as I mentioned updating the DIY Project page as well as added a Craft & Sew Page (coming soon) We also want to start hosting monthly Giveaways to you our readers which we love so much! We also plan on doing some video projects, house tours of our tiny house and maybe some craft projects (we had fun taping the House Proud Segment for Nate Berkus Show)


I also want to get better at take pictures for the blog and of course of my family! I’ll be investing in a new DSLR camera soon! I was gifted Abode Photo Editing software recently (thanks mom) so I’ll be learning that too. Big Thanks to everyone for the sweet comments, encouragement and emails about our little house. Another goal I have for the blog is to blog more often goal is 4-5 days a week which is so doable. The plan is show you more of our projects we’ve thinking about and in process of even if there won’t be a pretty after for awhile, and continue keeping our content good ( at least to me its pretty good!). I will also be more invovoled in other Social Media, mostly Twitter. Oh hoe I love to tweet!! I hate to say it I'm  to into Facebook, but I love Twitter, so if your on Twitter follow me :)

What's your favorite project of ours that we've done around our house?

What's your favorite DIY project you've completed in your home?

Avery's Four Month Birthday Photo

It's hard to believe our little guy as we've nicked named him around Chic Little House, just turned a fun four months old. As a reminder just in case your new to my blog, we're taking monthly  pictures of Avery for the next two years in his nursery. Nothing will be planned just him hanging out, that way we can watch him virtually grow up in his nursery. After 24 months of pictures they will be complied and turned into a book.


Avery Four Months

I've been enjoying his little photo shoots each one reminds me how precious every moment is with our baby. Just like last month I had to share more than one pictures. I took these pictures after I nursed him. One thing I really enjoy about blogging is it being a our dairy of daily life, projects and house stuff. Here are a few little guy milestones; started rolling over a few days before turning three months, grasping for toys and playing with them, loves tummy time, big HUGE smiles, makes cooing sounds, loves hearing mommy sing to him, super good head control, brings his hands to is mouth, loves chewing on hands! Yup I'm a proud mamma! 

Watch him grow, one month, two months, three months 

Easy DIY Fabric Napkins

Now not our dining room got a recent update with the new floral drapes a I sewed, I wanted to bring in a bit more color in with napkins and just in time for the upcoming Holiday Season. Instead of going to the store and spending some moolah, and I decided to look though my fabric stash. I'm always buying a yard or more of fabric here and there for pillows or just in case projects. I was happy when I came across a pretty yard for fabric I originally intended into sewing into pillows, but the yellow citron shade wasn't a good fit with our living room. However I loved how the shade complimented our dining room curtains. I decided to sew 16 in square napkins, the perfect desert size. 

The fabric I used has a cool geometric print, and I like how a portion of the design would be in each napkin. I told my inner Martha to shush and not worry about cutting each napkin to 'match.' I iron and pinned each side of the napkins using a 1/2 inch seam allowance. The longest part in diying your own napkins is ironing and pinning. I trimmed the excess fabric on each corner to create a cleaner look. I estimate each napkin took about five minutes to sew. I spent around 20 mins or so on these napkins, most of the time I spent was on ironing and pining. I spent much less time it would have taken to buckle Avery in is car seat, find a parking space, drive to the store, get out the stroller and troll the isles. Yeah when you add all that at, it was easier to sew these napkins while the little guy took his nap. 

I have some darling napkin ring holders { a wedding gift } I used to see how the napkins look. In my opinion very cute. I also like how there's a hint of a pattern, that's not fully seen until after they are open. I'll mostly use our new napkins for desert time or when my girlfriends are our over. I still have some left over fabric, so most likely I'll sew two more. 

The napkins are a super simple diy sewing project, for those of you curious about learning to sew, this would be a good 'testing the waters sewing project.' This project could also be done very easy using no sew hem tape. I also like the idea of giving a set of napkins along with pretty napkin rings to a friend for a house warming gift. One of my girlfriends just recently moved into a new apartment, so she just might receive a set as a present!

What do you think of my super simple diy napkins? Have you done any simple sewing projects lately? Are you thinking about learning to sew?

* ps: I've been working on our Craft & Sew Page, Hopefully it will be 'live' soon!