Mini-me follows in my footsteps

Last night we took Abby to the Sanrio store and she was in heaven. It was a tough choice, but she picked  out a Hello Kitty ring. I could squee with happiness that she loves Hello Kitty as much as I do.

Sofa City Sweetheart!

After much debate and a lot of sitting on sofas, we finally made a choice.  I'm so excited to have comfy seating instead of our couch which due to being broken both hurts your back and bites you in the butt. Last night we placed our order for the Karlstad sofa and footstool from IKEA. We picked the dark brown colored slipcover.  I love that it has a slipcover because we can wash it or change it out later on if we want to/need to. These are the pieces we bought.




We plan to push the footstool against the sofa for that chaise-y feel, like so.

IKEA goodies

I had been waiting for what seemed like forever to go to IKEA and get some things for our house so of course I have to share the highlights from our trip.


For our bedroom...









And new dining table and chairs...

House updates

I have been wanting a dark area rug for under our dining table.  That area in our house seems so cold to me both in appearance and temperature wise. When we were grocery shopping Sunday night, I saw a bin of area rugs for $20. So I snagged this chocolate brown one for our house.  I am loving it so far.







I think it will look great with the new table I'm planning to get next month for that space.


I want to replace our wood chairs with Urban chairs from IKEA. I'm not in love with the colors that they have this year though. I want the blue ones for our desk area in our master bedroom. But for the kitchen I think a darker color would be better.


I finally took a picture of my master bedroom post-paint job. I am a little shy about sharing because the room still feels so unfinished to me. Also our desks are a holy mess right now because I'm purging and sorting through things. This is the armoire my Dad made me that I painted this fall. I'm still looking for some photos that belong on that shelf (don't know where I stashed them).

Around the house

A sneak peek of my new bedroom color scheme below. I loved the fabulous mood board that Eve designed for me and I took away some great ideas from that. I decided it was time for me to give up the hot pink in our master bedroom. I do of course still have it the master bath. I really wanted calm soothing colors in our bedroom. We sold our exercise bike because it was just collecting dust. We love our gym so we'd rather work out there. I painted our bedroom furniture and shelves black/brown to match our IKEA desks and Expedit shelves. I did learn through my painting project things I should have done differently. I plan on redoing one dresser in the spring.
From this:




To this:





I'll post better pictures when I'm all done painting. I suspect it will be a couple more weeks until we have time. One wall will be pretty labor intensive because it includes the our workspace and unplugging computers.

A close-up of the pattern of my new comforter. I've been dying to put it out and have had since October when I bought it with birthday money.





I have a few things on my my IKEA wishlist for our room. I love this area rug that was on our moodboard:





I want to swap out our mismatched office chairs for these IKEA urban chairs in light blue:





I also have my eye on these blinds in dark brown for our bedroom windows.JC Penney's has them on sale and they should be more on sale starting Wednesday.


At Lowe's yesterday I saw this light fixture and fell in love. It would be so perfect for our dining area. It has every color of the tapestry we have hanging on the wall.




I plan on replacing our dining table after the holidays with this one from IKEA:




I want to replace our benches and chairs with more IKEA urban chairs, but I'm not too keen on their current color choices for the dining area. They have white and the light blue. I loved the colors from last year, orange or green. So hopefully they will offer something else soon.


Lastly I must share my new Christmas tree. I am quite surprised that I was able to get my husband to agree to it.

Make-up review

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some new goodies from Sephora.  I've been using them for awhile so I could see what I really thought.  Sometimes I love something right away and then wind up not loving it a week later. I got a Tarina Tarantino Magic Smudge Pen in Smokey Topaz.




I have been wanting a good dark matte shadow that is easy to throw in my purse.  I love my Urban Decay shadows, but sometimes I just want something that's not all glittery.  This one fits the bill.  It definitely has more staying power if I use it with eyeshadow primer.  It lasts all day.  I also like that it looks good enough on it's own that I don't need eyeliner with it.

I also got Smashbox's Wish for the Perfect Primer set.  I was using Too Face's shadow primer which I liked, but I think I like the Smashbox one better....it seems to have more staying power.  I had tried the Smashbox face primer as a sample and loved how it made my face feel.  I don't know if it really reduced my pores, but since I've been using it my skin is clearer. I have been using the pore & line primer as well but again, I don't notice a lot of difference in the size of my pores.  The face primers definitely help keep my face power on all day though.

My early birthday gift to myself:







Haunted house luminary from Bath & Body Works. It has room for one of their 3 wick jar candles inside. I love it.

My way of remembering

The ring I bought from Etsy to remember my Dad came today. I am very pleased with it. I'm not awesome at taking pictures, but I did take some so I could share. It's hammered silver and the inscription is stamped on the inside "Daddy, always in my heart". It also has a heart on the outside.

My new friend

Awhile ago, my sister bought me my first Momiji doll from on my favorite stores, Moxie in DeKalb. (By the way, if you are in DeKalb you must check out Moxie). After that first Momiji doll, I was hooked and have decided to collect them. So today, I brought home this guy:

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He's the "I Don't Care Bear". Abby said "He doesn't eat jelly, he eats blood!" LOL.

Cool giveaway at Blonde in A Blog

My friend Julianna over at Blonde in a Blog is doing a cool giveaway for Kangaroodles for a $50 gift certificate. I am loving the Customized Soft Photo Book. I think this would be a great gift.

Check out this cool giveaway over on A Blonde Walks into a Blog.

IKEA Goodies

Yesterday Josh and I got to take a much-awaited trip to IKEA to purchase some things for the house with the Christmas money my inlaws gave us. These are the highlights:



New area rug for the living room, which our dog Gracie loves:





These I am going to use as window treatments on our sliders in the dining area and living room window. I also have new curtains to put up. I might want to spray these dark brown when the weather gets warmer, but I'm going to go with the natural color for now.





For the downstairs bathroom which we plan to repaint very soon (a sort of teal color):




These are to go with this curtain from Urban Outfitters that will hang in the shower:

We also got an awesome deal on little clamp lights for our smaller Expedit bookshelf that is now acting as a room divider, but I could not find a photo of them on IKEA's website. They were clearing out the red colored ones so they were marked down from $30 to $7 for a pair. They fit perfectly and provide some reading light for when I am sitting in my new rocking chair. I will have to post pictures once the window treatments are installed.

My Review of Cuddle Comfort Blanket

Product: Cuddle Comfort Blanket by

Submitted at: Brylane Home

Review Status: Pending

Love it!

by M from IL on 10/19/2009

Pros:

Attractive Design, WARM, Easy To Clean, Comfortable, Soft

Best Uses:

Winter, Spring/Fall

Describe Yourself:

Budget Shopper

I had been wanting one of these and thought about getting the one you see on tv until I felt the material which was quite scratchy. My husband bought this one for me for my birthday and I was so happy I waited. This is so soft! It's also nice and warm and long enough to tuck under your feet. I'm a bigger girl and the arms fit me just fine. The sleeves are nice and wide.

New glasses

Just wanted to show off my new glasses...still not sure what I think of them. I don't think they are bling-y enough for me, but it is also good to have a change.

New shoes

I love to get a bargain. To me, shopping for a deal is like a sport. So I have to share my latest good deal. Friday Abby and I went out for a mommy/daughter "date". We got ice cream, had her hair cut and went shoe shopping. Abby has always loved new shoes. We went to Payless where we got these 2 pairs. One for me and one for her. (I think you can assume the iCarly pair was not the ones I chose.) Originally our shoes were $44. After the BOGO sale and a coupon I had from Office Max (weird huh?), we spent $25. Yay! Hard for the husband to complain when it's that good of a deal.

My new mom-mobile

I am so excited because this afternoon I am going to pick up my new car. It's a 2010 Kia Soul. Pictures (borrowed from dealer's website) below:

I <3 IKEA

I have been bugging requesting for Josh to take a day off and go to IKEA with me for the past month or two to get some stuff. Our house is small for 4 people and our biggest problem is storage.  Since we don't forsee moving anytime soon (thank you crappy housing market), we are attacking the problem room by room.  Since we both use the computer like all the time for Facebook either school or work, we needed to have 2 good size desks rather than 1 we had.  

After spending a fun day at IKEA eating and shopping (yes we managed to eat breakfast & lunch there), we now have a wall of desk space in our master bedroom and a new bookshelf.  We are most likely going to need another bookshelf in the future for storage.  I am so excited that not only do we each have a desk for our laptops, but I have a space dedicated to scrapbooking and some real storage.  

The highlights of our trip....

FREE coffee before 11am accompanied by the $1 cinnamon roll we split...



Josh


Some of what we got while there:






I want to go back and get this rug for our living room:

Free coffee!

Hurry, they only have the dark roast left.

Yay for new shoes

Although I bought them like a month ago (ahem...thank you US Mail service), my new kitty shoes arrived today. My old ones were starting to come apart, so they needed to be replaced. I squealed with delight when I saw these.






Cute pink nose!



Yes, I'm 32 and I wear cat shoes and I'm proud!