Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

It's already been an excellent week this week. Some great friends got married in a beautiful and incredibly sweet ceremony on Saturday, the new neighbors are working with us to get the issues resolved (I think attempting to get a face-to-face meeting was what swung the pendulum in the right direction, more on that later), work is working itself out (for right now anyways), the fundraiser for local cancer research (a lot of the money goes directly to Tim's oncologist) we attended Monday night looked to be a huge success (YAY!), Tim's grandparents surprised everyone by driving down from Pennsylvania to attend the fundraiser (LOVE them!) and meet their new great-granddaughter (my niece - not my child), its ALREADY Wednesday AND I just won my first blog giveaway! I haven't had a week this excellent in some time!

So about that giveaway, I read a lot of different blogs every day to get ideas, be inspired and entertained. I've seen various blogs posting things like this for some time now but just recently started to enter them. Aubrey & Lindsay's Little House Blog is one that I've been following since I started this little adventure and they put up a great post about having curtains made by Tonic Living who has some really neat fabrics at really reasonable prices. I won a $50 gift card to Tonic Living, now what to do with it....

Here are the 2 ideas I'm working with:

1. Put it towards getting some curtains made for the master bedroom. If I go this route I want the thick wooden curtain rods with some round finials and this gorgeous Adorn fabric in Olive.

2. Get the Tiny Dots in Kiwi fabric to make a bench for the end of our bed. I found an AWESOME tutorial at the blog Oeil Prive for a tufted bench that I think this could look great with some pretty wood legs and fun buttons in the tufting.

I think I'm going to order samples of both (and well maybe a few more I think are great as well) since their fabric samples are only $1!

Make sure to pop over to Aubrey & Lindsay's blog to check out all of their awesome ideas, here are a few of my favorites:

1. I LOVE these headers above the door and may have to incorporate that above our 3 doors leading to the great outdoors: New Backdoor Trim

2. I have a new organization system to keep Tim & I on the same page and putting it on a bulletin board rather than the fridge would be a much better home for it. Here is an idea for a prettified bulletin board: Bulletin Board Project

3. Privacy is an issue (as I'm sure you could infer from Who Do They Think They Are?) so adding some of these screens to the side of our porch could be a great way to keep everything pretty but remove the feeling of being on display: DIY - Privacy Screens, How to by Aubrey

4. I've been sketching out ideas for our built-ins and have every intention (as of right now) to build them myself (well with my dad's help) but the company Aubrey & Lindsay found to build theirs looks as though it could have some great inspiration for me. And if you aren't as lucky to have a dad who you can con into building things for you (albeit you have to wait 5 years for him to get to you) then they look like a great company to build your pieces for you!: Adding Bookcases

Also, Tonic Living is providing a discount by following the directions below, check them out!
 
Get 10% off your order enter AUBREYANDLINDSAY when checking out. Also....get FREE SHIPPING for all orders over $50.00 (CAD) before taxes if your postal code starts with an "L", "M", or "N"!

Thanks again to Aubrey & Lindsay for this great give-away! Thanks to you I've added Toronto to my "places I need to visit" list. :)