Giveaway Weekend!

Hey hey there! Well, I’m overwhelmed by the response to my last post – in a very good way. I’m so thrilled about all of your emails and thankful for the lovely comments. :)

I’m SO excited about this weekend’s giveaway! (I know, when am I not?) But reheheally…this one is right up my alley! You know I’m a tool girl so I was so tickled (pink) when Jessica wrote me about Tomboy Tools:

They sell everything any DIYer would need, but these tools are made specifically for the ladies. Pretty much everything is PINK!

I’m so hyped about this – if any of you are wanting to learn how to use tools, try your hand at more DIY projects, or just get some darn cute tools to replace some old ones, these are PERFECT for you.

The basics kit has all the goodies you’ll need for most simple projects:

It includes a hammer, (multi-bit) screwdriver, tape measure and pliers – all on my top ten tools for the DIYer list!

And do you see the pink?? I’m dying. Best part about these – you’re hubby will never steal them. ;)

This kit is GENIUS – everything you’d need to tackle small mosaic-type tile projects!:

Perfect for the crafter or the DIYer!

Another one of the tools I use a ton is a staple gun – mostly for upholstering headboards and seat cushions:

How fun is this? I am so thrilled with the concept of tools made specifically for women!

I love these safety glasses:

Pretty much ALL of options at the hardware stores are…well…ugly. These are too cute and I’m totally getting a pair!

And if you thought the pink tools and glasses were fun, check out the tool belt:

My Dad gave me one I use, but after seeing this I have the urge to dye it or hot glue rhinestones on it. ;)

Tomboy Tools doesn’t just carry tools – they sell a great selection of garden tools, painting supplies and even items for your car, like PINK jumper cables:

They think of everything. :)

What a PERFECT holiday gift for the woman who has everything – or a daughter at school, maybe your Mom who wants to learn how to use tools. I just love it!

Tomboy Tools also sells their tools at home parties, which I think would be just about the best. party. ever. But you know me. I’m a little tool-obsessed. :)

Jessica with Tomboy Tools is offering a FANTASTIC prize for this weekend’s winner! I’m so excited for the lucky gal who wins the Tomboy Traveler:

It’s a canvas bag filled with a (magnetic – fancy!) hammer, tape measure, screwdriver, pliers, utility knife, level, gloves, safety glasses, sanding block and even a carpenter’s pencil. (A $80 value!)

Even if you aren’t a seasoned DIYer, you’ll fool them all with this one! And if you’ve been using tools forever like me, you’ll look cute doing it. :)

Here’s how to enter the Tomboy Tools giveaway:

1. Leave a comment here. Have you pulled out any Christmas decor yet? (Come on…I won’t tell a soul.)

2. Visit Jessica’s Tomboy Tools page here. Check out their products and come back here to let us know one that you’d love to try out.

3. Like Jessica’s page on Facebook here. Come back and leave another comment letting us know you did.

**You can enter using one method of entry or all – it’s up to you!

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 only open to US residents only. It will be open till this Monday, November 14th (half way already?) at noon EST.

Hope you have a lovely, lovely weekend!

Winners and Holiday Home!

Well hello there! Hope you had a lovely weekend!!

I need to announce a few lucky winners!

The winner of the Black and Decker Steam Mop is Natalie at The Bibler Family!

The two winners of The Rusted Chain giveaway are Lori at Itsy Bitsy Stitches and Veronika at Love Tuvster!

Congrats ladies! Please send me an email at thriftydecorchick (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll get you connected with your goodies!

I also wanted to announce that my gal pals and I are baaaack with the Holiday Home Link Parties!:

I think I speak for all of us when I say this holiday series has become our favorite!!

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Layla will kick it off with table decor ideas, Rhoda is up next with mantels, then Kate with holiday crafts and we’ll wrap it up with my annual Christmas tree partay!

Can’t WAIT!

For now, I’ll be back later this evening with the November Before and After Party!:

See you then!

Giveaway Weekend!

Wow. You all love a free steam mop, eh? ;) I love it!

After you’re done cleaning the floors, you’ll deserve to treat yourself. And I have a GREAT way to do that this weekend!

One of the great blessings of my life has been blogging, for more reasons that I can count. But one of the biggest reasons is the true friends I’ve met over the past three (plus) years.

Some I’ve really met, some I’ve never met but feel like I have. And feel like I’ve known them for my whole life. One of those people is my friend Beki of The Rusted Chain:

Beki writes a beautiful blog, takes beautiful pictures and makes beautiful hand-stamped jewelry.

I just love her pieces and always love sharing them with you. Here are a few of my favorites!

I love that so many of her necklaces can be personalized and made into a one-of-a-kind piece. This one with the little pennants is too cute!:

Isn’t that adorable?

I love the little dainty hearts on this one – one for each kiddo:

I love those little bitty pearls as well. :)

This one is PERFECT for the photography nut:

And the sweet little clouds and umbrella on this one just make me SMILE:

The thankful necklace is just beautiful – the colors are perfect for the fall (or any time of year) and the message works all year long as well:

I LOVE that one!

I also love that she’s created a way to personalize any of the pieces – these little bitty charms can be added to any necklace for just $7 each:

I love how sweet and dainty just the small tags are on a necklace by themselves too! You could add them to anything – a charm bracelet, any necklace, a keychain. Love!

Beki doesn’t just make necklaces though – her bracelets and earrings are lovely:

And her prices are FANTASTIC! Especially considering the handmade and personalized part. ;)

I especially love their new holiday ornament for this year:

It is beautiful and unique and rustic – it would be especially lovely for a newly married couple or to mark something special that happened this year. I don’t know if we should get “We’re debt FREEEE!” on ours or “Welcome Peanut.” (Our crazy dog.)  ;)

OK, onto the REALLY good part! First of all, anyone that orders from The Rusted Chain till November 12th will get 15 percent off by entering discount code “TD15.”

Of course any of these pieces would make GREAT Christmas gifts (cough…49 days…cough), or it would be a lovely way to treat yourself. Just sayin’. ;)

The kind folks at The Rusted Chain are giving TWO of you $50 to spend as you wish! With that, you could buy something for you, something for Mom. Or something for your sister and something for your BFF. Or something for you and something for you. (It’s allowed.)

Here’s the three ways to win one of two $50 Rusted Chain gift cards:

1. Leave a comment here. What are you up to this lovely fall weekend?

2. Visit The Rusted Chain here. Take a look around and come back to let us know what piece you’d love to have!

3. “Like” TRC on Facebook, come back here to let us know in a third comment.

**I wanted to make sure you all know, the Facebook option is NOT mandatory – all the options are just extra ways to win. :) You can enter one time, two, or three!

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 only open to US residents only. It will be open till next Monday, November 7th at noon EST.

Hope you have a warm and cozy weekend!

A steamy giveaway!

Hello! I have some FUN for you today – this post is all about cleaning the floors!! WHOOOOO! I mean, really. Is there anything more exciting?

Just CALM DOWN. I know it’s awesome. (The real awesome comes later, hang in there.)

I’ve mentioned before that our previous floors were laminate. The fridge died, leaked water all over, and the laminate was toast. Fast forward a couple months later and a (very) helpful insurance check, and we ended up with hardwood floors.

Have I mentioned how much I love them? If I could hug floors, I would these. (I may have tried. It was not pretty.)

Our laminate floors were super shiny and IMPOSSIBLE to keep clean. I cannot express to you the agony of the cleaning (using a floor cleaner and one of those microfiber mops – which was not easy to push around) for a good hour, then not two minutes later someone would walk through in bare feet and I would be in a corner rocking and mumbling something about “floors…clean…help.”

It was intense. :)

After our new floors were installed I asked the Floor Guy how to clean them, and he recommended a steam mop. That made me giddy, cause the fine folks at Black and Decker had sent already me one to check out:

I actually got it before the floor debacle and tried it on the laminate and it cleaned them well, but did leave streaks. But ever.y.thing. I used left streaks – I found out later it was because of the build up of all of the cleaners I’ve used on them over the years. Nothing would clean them up.

I’m THRILLED to say the steam mop did stellar work on the new floors. I’m in heaven. No more mumbling.

I told you before that the new floors don’t show anything. We go in and out of this back door multiple times a day and bring in dirt, water and dust. I hadn’t cleaned our floors in over a week week, and this section is the worst it got:

Can’t see it? I know. Because they rock my world.

Here’s a closer look:

I know. Still not bad. Hate me.

One of the many things I love about this steam mop is that it’s ready to go in seconds – you just grab one of the (THREE!) pads they provide:

Just lay it face down on the floor and place the mop on top:

The steam mop has three different settings:

I of course picked the wood option, which I’ve noticed seems to “steam” the least of them – which is a good thing when dealing with wood.

I put water and just a bit of vinegar in the mop and then push it around a bit. It dries almost immediately – I mean supa fast:

OK, that may be the most underwhelming before and after of all time, cause the before looked pretty good.

 

I know. Rocks my world.

This is the area we walk through the most every day, and you can see there are NO STREAKS!:

Holy cats. Hallelujah.

Oh. happy. day.

Best part? It takes less than ten minutes to clean all of the floors in the family room and kitchen. That took at least an hour (and some sweat) before.

We get sun all day in the back of our house, and before it was like a big huge pointy finger, highlighting all of the smudges and dirt and footprints.

Now, it’s just…(pretty) floors:

I also use the steam mop on our vinyl, tile and the peel and stick floors in the laundry room – every type of flooring cleans up great!

The AWESOME folks at Black and Decker are offering one of these beauties to one of you as well!:

That would be a $120 value. Told ya – WHOOHOO!!

Here’s how to enter to win a Black and Decker steam mop:

1. Leave a comment here. Tell us the hardest spot to keep clean in your house.

2. “Like” the Black and Decker Facebook page here. Come back and let us know you did.

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 only open to US residents only. It will be open till next Monday, November 7th at noon EST. (So you have plenty of time to enter!)

Happy cleaning! :)

Giveaway Weekend!

Well hello all! Happy Halloween weekend to you! And YOU! ;)

I’m back with another fantastic giveaway this weekend, cause my advertisers RAWK.

MirrorMate sells custom frames made specifically for your mirror. I think most of us have those basic, frameless mirrors in our bathrooms, and MirrorMate provides a fantastic solution for dressing them up! 

The folks at MirrorMate were awesome and sent me a mirror to try out. Since our mirrors are already framed out, I asked a girlfriend if she wanted one. Uh…YES!

She runs a home daycare in her basement, and some day I will show you the whole thing. It is AWESOME. When they remolded their master bathroom (which I will also show you someday!), they moved the huge builder mirror down to the daycare:

It’s a fun little dress up area for the kids. TOO cute!

We sent the measurements of the mirror to the folks at MirrorMate and we had the frame within a week! I gotta be honest…when I opened up the assembly instructions I was a little intimidated:

But it was SO easy to put together people! Just four easy steps:

 

Those little cardboard corners were awesome – they help hold the frame just right and level for you till you’re ready to stick it on for good. (The frame stays up with the super sticky tape on the back that goes directly on the mirror.)

One little tip they offered was to color in the edges of each piece before assembly, just in case you’d see any of it after it was put together. It was a great idea! I used a black Sharpie to color in ours a bit:

It took about 20 minutes to assemble it, and then after letting the glue dry, it only took about five more minutes to actually get it hung.

It’s such a simple change but we couldn't’ believe the difference it made!:

Let’s take a look at the before and after, shall we?

Isn’t that crazy? Love it!

We used Pemaquid Black for her mirror, but they have a crazy good selection of colors and designs:

They also have versions you can paint whatever color you want:

If you’re not sure which one you want, they will send you a four inch sample for free (just a small shipping and handling charge for up to three samples.) Love that!

Well, it’s time for the best part – the folks at MirrorMate are offering one of you $200 to spend as you wish at their site! That $200 will get you far – my friend’s mirror was HUGE and was right around the price.

You won’t believe the difference it will make to your ho hum mirror!

Here’s how to enter the MirrorMate giveaway:

1. Leave a comment here. What are your kiddos going to be this Halloween? (We’ll have a little pirate. Arrrrgh.) Are you dressing up?

2. Visit MirrorMate here. Check out their frame options and come back to let us know which one you would pick out.

3. Like them on Facebook here. Come back and leave another comment letting us know you did.

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 only open to US residents only. It will be open till this Monday, October 31st (buwhahahahaaa) at noon EST.

Hope you have a positively ghoulish weekend!  :)

Giveaway Weekend!

Hey all! I hope you have a lovely weekend planned! We have marching band. And then some marching band. And then…more marching band. And then a nap. ;)

I have an AWESOME giveaway for you all this weekend! I always get extra excited when it’s one I would love to win myself…which is pretty much all of them. :)

The folks at Hometalk are my kind of people:

It’s no surprise that I’m all about anything home-related, and this is one of those sites I can get sucked into for hours.

Hometalk is basically a Q &A site for all things DIY and decor:

There are more than 100 categories – from specific rooms (kitchen, bathrooms) to exteriors (landscaping, roofing) and even decor topics (painting, window treatments):

And of course, everything DIY and just general house questions:

I won’t even have a specific question and I’ll click through the different topics to read all the posts, cause I’m just a house nerd like that. You never know when you’ll need to install duct work or something. It could happen. :)

They make it SUPER easy to ask or search for a question. And the answers and suggestions seem to come pretty fast from the members, which is helpful when you’re in the middle of a project. Ask me how I know. 

Hometalk also has a list of featured panelists to help as well:

There’s just a few faces you may recognize if you’re an HGTV junky like me. :)

Not only is this site super helpful, but this weekend they are offering a $100 Lowe’s gift card to one of you lucky ducks!!

Annnnd…hold on to your seats…if we get more than 1000 entries for this giveaway, they will up that gift card to $250! WHOO HOO! Do you know how much awesomeness you could create with $250 at Lowe’s?

LOTS. That’s how much. :)

Here’s how to enter the Hometalk giveaway:

1. Leave a comment here. Hollaaaaa at me!

2. Visit Hometalk here. Join their site by signing up – just click “sign up” in the upper right corner. (They make it super easy and fast to do so.) Come back here and let us know you signed up in another comment. And if you are already signed up, let me know that in your second comment!

3. Like them on Facebook here. Come back and leave another comment letting us know you did.

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 only open to US residents only. It will be open till this Monday, October 24th at noon EST.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!