Decor steals

**This giveaways is now closed. Winners have been emailed. Thanks!

Hello there! We are amping up for a weekend of RAIN here…and lots of it. The remains of Isaac are on their way and we can still use it after a horrible drought this summer. I hope everyone affected by the hurricane is now safe and dry!

I’m back this weekend with a GREAT giveaway from Decor Steals, formerly Wuslu.com. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a giveaway and that’s because I’m getting picky about those that I share with you. I’m always excited about this one because I’m a HUGE Decor Steals fan.

I love this site and if you haven’t heard of it you’ll want to hang around and check out some of their home decor items. Decor Steals is a site that offers one fantastic decor item every day…for a steal. (Totally couldn’t resist that.) Each one goes live at 10 a.m. EST daily and they now have extended deals that stay on throughout the week as well.

Here’s just a few of my favorites pieces of late…

I love this idea for a party – this wine stand has small chalkboard labels so you can easily show everyone what’s being served:

I think that would be cute with a few flowers lined up in vases too. :)

I love these little holders and the idea of using them for utensils:

I would keep those out all the time! You know, for when I can’t be bothered to open the drawer for a spoon. ;) They’d also be cute in the bathroom for cotton balls and make up brushes.

I love these galvanized tubs and think they would be a GREAT item for a spot like above the cabinets or on a plant ledge:

They would also look cute in a bathroom – maybe with towels rolled up in them?

Did I mention that every item, no matter what the size, is only $5 for shipping? (In the 48 contiguous states.) FIVE bucks!!

We all know if you put a bird on it, it’s cuter. And that goes for this mail sorter as well:

I think I would use it for our napkins on the kitchen table.

This typography bamboo rug was a HUGE hit on Decor Steals, and I can see why:

Isn’t that cool? I would totally frame and hang that one. Wouldn’t it be great art?

And finally, but certainly not least, I love this iron warming grill:

How cool for a party or just to keep dinner nice and toasty? I’ve never seen one so pretty!

The fine folks at Decor Steals have created a video to show how they their site works. It’s pretty darn cute:

I love when the lady screams at the computer when her item is gone. Totally me. And by the way, I do not get $5 credits for this post. ;)

Here’s the best part  -- the lovely folks at Decor Steals are giving away $100 to one lucky winner and $50 to a second winner to spend as you wish on the site! Oh. yeah.

Here’s how to enter to win one of two credits ($100 and $50) to Decor Steals:

1. Leave a comment here. What do you have planned this Labor Day weekend? We have a wedding and a concert, and although I’m pretty sure the concert will get rained out, I’m OK with it because I love cozy, rainy weekends so very much.

2. Visit Decor Steals here and check out their pick steals page. Which item do you want to see offered in the future? Come back here to let us know in a comment.

3. Visit their Facebook page and “like” it here. Let us know you did in another comment.

4. Subscribe to their email list here (you’ll get notices about the new deals) and if you do (or are already on the list), leave one more comment here.

* You can enter one, two, three or four times – it’s up to you! All options are not mandatory to win.

* Remember if you comment anonymously or you have a private blog, please include your email address in each entry, and spell it out with “at” and “dot” to avoid any spammy emails coming your way.

This giveaway is open to the contiguous US only. It will be close this Monday, September 3 at 9 a.m. EST.

I hope you have a lovely holiday weekend! ENJOY and stay safe!

DIY nailhead trim

Hey there! I’m back today with a quickie update that only took me a YEAR! You think I kid. ;) OK, the project only took a few minutes, but getting there took a year.

When we made some changes to the family room last year I found a new chair at HomeGoods for the space:

The chair is different for me – kinda funky and I love it. It doesn’t look it but it is so, so comfortable – I curl up in it almost every evening. :)

I always thought it could use a little somethin’ though, and when I saw Courtney’s post last summer I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

I even bought the supplies last year – a few packages of furniture trim from the hardware store:

I got mine from True Value and it’s the only place I’ve seen this nickel color in this size. Everyone else has other colors (bronze, black) in this larger size, but not this nickel color.

And then the nails sat in the garage for…well. A long dang time. ;) A year now? I am ON IT!

Last night I got a wild hair and decided to just do it already.

I started out by eyeing each nailhead piece and then quickly realized that’s not the best idea. They were all wonky and I knew the wonky would drive me crazy.

So I came up with what I thought was a brill idea:

I just took the tape measure and marked off inch spaces with a pencil. The pencil erased right off if I needed to move one. Smart huh? Well I looked back at Courtney’s post today and just realized she did the exact same thing. Maybe it was in the subconscious all this time? Who knows? ;)

Anyway, I used her brilliant idea and it went super fast after that:

Just place them on your pencil mark and use a hammer to tap them in:

Make sure to hammer them in well so they get into the furniture frame – it creates a nice “tuft.” And when they are in they are nearly impossible to get out…believe me. :) I had to move a few of them along the way.

They are SO very not perfect. But they look much better than when I just eyeballed them. This side was a little iffy:

But if you stand back you’ll never notice.

I think the front looks pretty good!:

I always thought you had to use the long strips of nailhead trim in order to get this look, and when I’ve looked for those at fabric or craft stores in the past they’re either out of stock or it’s not cheap.

This took four packages, about $7 total I think? Not bad for a little bling update!:

This project took me about 15 minutes total – once you get the marks on there it goes really fast.

Now I’m trying to figure out where else I can use this trim – I like the bronze version I’ve seen as well. I think they’d be cool hammered into a frame or wood or something. My wheels are turning. :)

P.S. You can see more about the rug in this space here and the candlestick table here!

 

I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

Scraper sites

Well, if you read a bunch of DIY/decorating/crafting blogs you’ve probably seen the scuttlebutt over the past few days about the “scraper” sites stealing our content and what we’re trying to do to prevent it.

When I say scraper site, I mean a site that takes content from other blogs and pulls it onto it’s own…basically taking my posts and putting them word for word on their blogs. (Here’s more info on them.)

It’s been happening for a while now, but in the past six months, and especially in the past three…it’s gotten absolutely out of control.

I get two to three emails a week from bloggers who have found my content on another site. And it’s never the same site twice. :) When that happens I have four options – email the “owner” of the scraper site and tell them to stop stealing my content (which is always through a comment because they don’t have any contact info on their site). Or I can pay a lawyer to contact them, report them to Google, or ignore.

I’ve done all of them but one – I found out how much it would cost to pay a lawyer to keep up on this and about spit. I’m talking hundreds if not thousands a month (and that’s just for the ones I know about.) This is because the first contact usually results in nothing – it’s going to take more than one email to make them stop. And these blogs are made up entirely of stolen content – so unless they’re being forced, they’re not going to go through and delete hundreds of posts they’ve stolen from my site.

I’ve tried emailing the jerks who do this and that’s a joke. I’ve tried reporting it to Google and if you’ve ever tried that you know it’s just not worth it – it happens so much I can’t even imagine how many of those they get just in one day. (And when someone is stealing hundreds of your posts this option is impossible anyway – you have to link to each questionable post.)

I’ve also tried ignoring them. But lately the rate at which it’s happening is staggering, and it’s not just me. If you’re a blogger and have been blogging for a while now, you’re content is probably being stolen too. I don’t say that to freak anyone out, it’s just a fact.

Thing is, they are getting traffic. I only hear of them because a blogger searched for a project I did and the scraper site came up instead of mine. And if you’ve linked up to one of my linky parties in the past few months, if you look into your analytics you’ll probably find traffic coming from a few of them. These people take the entire post, including 400 links from you all and put them on their own site. (The entire July Before and After Party was taken.)

So. I tell you in all honesty I’ve done what I can to stop it and I’ve come to a decision I’m not happy about, not in the least. If you read my site through Google Reader, after tomorrow (Wednesday) you’ll have to click the title of the post in reader to come to my site. It’s called truncating the feed, and although I hate truncating posts (and never plan to do them on the actual blog), it’s the only solution I’ve found -- at least right now.

This prevents (or at least makes it MUCH harder – so hard I hope they’ll give up) for these scraper sites to take my content. I try to be as transparent with you all as possible and wanted to let you know before I did the switch because I know it will affect how some of you read my posts. I am fully aware that some of you who read TDC through Google Reader will not want to click over, and I get it. But I do hope you will.

I’m nervous as all heck about this because I never want to make it hard for someone to read my posts, but as a business owner it’s a call I had to make. I know I’ll lose some readers and that kills me…this is not a decision that was made lightly. I just don’t have any other choice right now – a fellow blogger told me the other day that I should get an award for the number of sites who have stolen my content this year. Nice. :)

So bear with me…it sucks for my Reader followers I know. But I have to do something and this is all I know to do for the time being.

 

By the way, if you don’t read TDC through a feed, then you won’t notice any change at all.

If you are a blogger and would like to see if your content is on some of the scraper sites out there, send me an email and I’ll send you links to them. I’m not about to link to them here so they get even more traffic. :) And if you’ve seen my posts somewhere else, I would love it if you would send them my way.

Thank you to those who continue to send me emails about the ones that they find, I really appreciate it. As always, I am so thankful for my readers and am grateful to each of you who choose to spend some of your day with me.

DIY wood planked wall

Well hello! How was your weekend? Ours was great – we celebrated my sis’s upcoming nuptials with a shower and then a bachelorette party. All in one day. This big sis needed a nap by 7 p.m. ;)

I’ve been working on a project over the past couple of weeks that involved a bunch of little projects and I finally got them all done this weekend. I LOVE IT.

Our basement stairway was kind of the pits after the basement finishing – the tools and drywall scuffed and dinged up the walls, the old carpet was just…well, GROSS. And I had been using the walls in on the stairs to “store” all of my extra frames that I’m saving for upcoming projects.

Here it was in all it’s glory a few weeks ago:

The guys had to tear out some of the old carpet to install the baseboard trim by the stairs, so this actually looks better than it had looked. Before there was no trim at all along the bottom.

The first project was painting that trim before the new carpet was installed. It got a coat of primer and two coats of gloss white paint, which wasn’t too bad because I didn’t have to cut in or be careful because I knew the walls were getting repainted and the carpet was out of there.

After the new carpet was installed I went ahead with the walls. I decided to wait and paint after the carpet was installed because I figured there would be a bunch of scuffs from it being taken downstairs and installed on the stairs. And I was right. :)

I am pretty good at cutting in now, after years and years of painting, but I even so I like to tape off the trim before I paint so it protects it from those little bitty annoying flecks of paint:

I used my FrogTape and it didn’t have to be perfect because it was just there to protect the newly painted white trim. You can see that I don’t stick the tape down onto the trim, I let it stick out from the wall so it’s like a little “umbrella” for the trim. Precious. 

After the painting was done (I used the Marina Gray color from the basement that I told you about in this post), I was onto my the big idea I’ve had for the large wall in the stairway.

I had been dreaming this up for months and I was so excited to get it started. The basement bathroom still sits empty and unfinished, but I just had to focus on this instead because I was so psyched about it!

I bought five packages of these pine wood planks from Lowe’s:

They are about $9 each so this project was less than $50 total. I installed them on the wall, much like I do any beadboard project – I started at the top and went down from there, making sure each one fit into the next snugly.

This tongue and groove planking is SO easy to install! I just nailed it in with my nail gun as I went down the wall. When I was done I gave it a very light sanding (this stuff is already smooth to the touch) and then taped off my walls and ceiling:

I used the delicate FrogTape for the ceiling because every. single. time. I’ve ever taped off the ceiling to paint, some of the paint comes off with the paint. This time it didn’t, so that was a nice bonus. ;)

My drop cloth was cut up trash bags:

I usually just use an old sheet for my drop cloth, but this time I was using stain, not paint. And stain is impossible to clean up – I wasn’t taking any chances with new carpet:

I used this dark walnut color and looove it. It’s close to the color of our wood floors and it’s nice and rich and lovely.

I gotta tell you, I was sweating while staining this wall – I’ve never stained anything this large or vertical and I had to work fast to keep a “wet edge.” I was also trying to watch drips and trying not to flick it everywhere as I was working.

Sweating.

After I was done wiping it down (I showed you how to stain here), I stood back and swooned:

I LOOOOVE it. Luuuuurve. Luuuuv. Whatever.

Obsessed with it.

Before we had a one bulb light fixture in this space that I installed years ago, but it didn’t give off enough light for my liking. Since this space was getting a redo anyway, I replaced it with a new track light:

I loved that I could aim a couple of the lights on the awesomesauce wall and the others off to the side.

Normally I wouldn’t be thrilled about track lighting, but they’ve come a long way. I’ve mentioned before that I’m going for a slightly industrial, but warm, look in the basement, and I think this light fits in SO well with the wood wall:

I had to use my jigsaw to cut the planks so they fit around that small ledge we have down there. It’s sooo not perfect but no one will ever notice it…as far as I know. ;) Oh, and the boards themselves aren’t exactly the same length. I was going to caulk the edges but after I stained I realized you can’t even tell.

I still have to paint that ledge white and then this space is DONE. Who knew a simple basement stairway would be so much work?

Here’s another quick look at the before:

And after trim, paint, new carpet, a wood planked wall, a new light and minus a cat:

OH, I also spray painted the brass hardware brushed nickel (after I took this picture last night) and cleaned up the railings really well. They were NAS. TY.

Here’s the bottom set of steps before:

(They had to take some of the stairs apart to install the trim, hence no carpet here).

And here’s the view from downstairs up to the wood wall:

LOVE IT!! It’s warm and unique and I would hug it if I could.

OK, I’ve tried.

One of the many things I love about the basement is all of the wall space – it has so much potential! We don’t have a lot of wall space upstairs because our home has an open floor plan, so I’m stoked about doing some fun things with all of it.

Even the stairs have a ton of wall space. I don’t know if I’ll hang anything on the wood wall or let it be the art. If I don’t, there's a large wall above the ledge that I want to do something fun with.

What do you think, add art to the wood wall or let it be? What would you do?

New beginnings. New Features.

Ganesha: The remover of obstacles enjoying a sunny day in my new home.

I have been sharing my experiences of the new chapter of my life here in Minnesota on my personal blog, Rang: The Colours of Life.

Today I would also like to share few features that I have planned for Rang Decor.

As most of the readers must be aware of my immense adoration for the art & crafts of India, I will be reviving the series, the latest post on Ajrakh printing is already live. Do check it out if you haven't already!

If you are an upcoming designer, painter, artist or stylist (traditional or contemporary) who draws inspiration from the wealth of Indian heritage. Do drop me a mail with an introduction to your work. If we like what we see, will feature your work.

If you are an NGO or work with artisans at grassroot level to revive any dying craft of India, Rang Decor will provide a platform to showcase your work.

A Before & After feature about little Do-It-Yourself from my home.

Global/ Eclectic decor inspirations curated with my design sensibilities will also be featured.

I get a lot of queries regarding interior design consultations, I have not started personal consultations yet but hope to sometime soon. Meanwhile if there are many queries on a certain topic will try and do a post to address it.

So stay tuned for all this and more!

(Image by Arch)

Asran.

This post is a milestone for Rang Decor as it features first of the many global design inspirations that will be posted here in time to come. Global design that traces it's route along the Silk Road.

Saadia Nasir Ricart of Asran wrote to me months back while I was in Bangalore introducing me to her new project. A venture in which she curates unique handmade items sourced from regions along the Silk Road on her online store.

What is the Silk Road?

The Silk Road spanned 7000 miles, weaving its way through China, Central Asia, Northern India, and the Roman Empires. It connected the Yellow River to the Mediterranean Sea, along with all the trade, religions and philosophies on the way. Many of the regions today that were a part of this ancient trade route still use the same methods to create the things that were sold hundreds of years ago.

Saadia states being half Pakistani and half Japanese, and her parents being antique rug dealers for over 30 years, created a strong intrigue and love for the Silk Road cultures. 

Asran has a beautiful collection of Kilims from Turkey and Central Asia.

What are Kilims?

Saadia explains on her blog, "Kilims use several flat weaving techniques, kind of like knitting, but bigger and thicker weaves. Rugs on the other hand are made by individual knots knotted tightly together by pressing the weft against each other. 

Both techniques are extremely time consuming and require meticulous attention but that makes the final product all the more amazing!"

Kilims are mostly handmade in Persia, Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey. 

They use many geometrical patterns in the weaves and each symbol has a certain significance. Some Kilims are used as prayer rugs as well.

  

At Asran you will find some very interesting handcrafted decor accessories like this Camel Bone Powder Box from Lucknow, India. 

Silk Scarves and Pashmina Shawls as well...

"Originally inspired by Chinese pottery, Imperial ware, also known as Iznik, was so exquisite that European collectors in the mid 19th century thought it came from Persia. Though in the early 1900's scholars discovered that they were from the Ottoman empire and thus concluded that these Iznik ceramics were Turkish". explains Saadia.

Saadia with her mother in Agra.

So do drop by at Asran and check out the lovely handcrafted pieces from the Silk Road.

You can keep updated about Asran on Facebook as well.

(Images from Asran Decor and Asran Blog)

(Your) beautiful bathrooms

Hey hey! How the heck are ya? I’m in major get-as-much-done-as-possible mode right now. The sister’s wedding shower is tomorrow and like the good procrastinator that I am, I waited till today to really start preparing for it.

How much can one woman accomplish in 24 hours? We’re about to find out people. We’re about to find out.

I’m good under pressure though…I get all AMPED and PUMPED and ready to get ‘er done! That is till about seven hours from now when I’ll collapse. ;)

I’m back today sharing some of the beeeeautiful bathrooms you linked up at the Show Us Your House link up back in July. I really couldn’t get over all of the lovely rooms you all shared – so inspiring!!

I loved the color, the board and batten and the window treatment in Linda’s bathroom, but I think I liked these the best of all:

I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of the cuteness that is numbering things. ;)

OK, prepare yourself – Jennifer’s bathroom redo was SO gorgeous, I couldn’t decide on just one picture:

OH my goodness, I was drooling over each and every little bit of it!

I just had to share this cute idea too:

I must find a antique hand to hold a wash your hands sign! I must!! How cool is that?

You must check out the before of Virginia’s bathroom to truly appreciate this beautiful space:

They didn’t replace anything big though – it’s all the power of paint! And that one small striped accent wall is perfection!

I love how Jenn used mason jars for storage in her bathroom:

What did we do with all those mason jars before blogging? Now they are practically a decor staple. ;)

Lisa shared a brilliant idea to paint that pesky area behind the toilet:

I loathe that spot. Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes I just don’t paint back there. Don’t look next time you visit. ;)

And finally, but certainly not least, a lovely navy and gold bathroom makeover:

Shannon used some thrifty finds to redo this space and I love how elegant and dramatic it is! That deep blue color is gorgeous, especially with the pops of white.

So what do you think, pretty amazing huh? I continue to be blown away at the talent out there in blogland! As always, if you’d like to pin any of these images, please visit their respective sites to do so.

Anything fun planned for the weekend? After the wedding shower we’ll be bachelorette-partying it up, but I doubt I’ll last as long as the bride-to-be. Now that school has started I’m out of commission by about 10 p.m. ;)

Hope you  have a great one!