GIVEAWAY from A Tangled Skein

Have you all heard the crickets chirping around here?  Yeah?  Me too :(  I swear when life and business get busy my poor little blog is the first thing to fall off the plate!  I'm not sure why since I have been doing it the longest!  Anyways...I won't bore you with my apologies but I do come with a chance for goodies!!

Meet Danielle from From A Tangled Skein...clever name right?  We know I love a clever name!  Danielle won an advertising contest I held not long ago and kindly offered to do a giveaway for you all!  

Pretty nice dont.cha.think?!?  

A little bit about Danielle in her own words

How could you not want to win one of these adorable items?

I love this Giggly Gnome earflap hat!

 or these adorable cupcake hats!

and I am torn between these 2 for my favorite!  I love that little koala down there but I love the stitching on this little lamb!  Hmm...so many cute hats....only 1 head 

Danielle has generously offered a $25 store credit so YOU can pick the item you most want created just for you!

Here's how to enter:

Mandatory: 

Visit From A Tangled Skein, come back here and tell me what you would pick if you won!

For extra entries (please leave a separate comment for each entry to count)

Visit From A Tangled Skein on fb and 'LIKE' their page

Follow From A Tangled Skein's blog

Contest will close Thursday night 11:59p

Also, this week only A Tangled Skein is offering 10% off your order when you enter "InnerHooker" in the notes to seller at checkout!

Baby Warrior loses in battle

January 18 2011

Sawyer's first battle scars!

Now I knew having a boy would probably be different than a girl particularly when it came to stitches, broken bones, etc...  I did think I'd have another year or 2 before our first ER trip.  Poor Sawyer got in a fight with our brick fireplace and clearly the fireplace won :(  

He was such a trooper playing with his cars and still climbing all over the place while we waited our turn.  They sedated him to stitch him up.  It was so heartbreaking.  Stitches, sure I was dealing ok with that.  Seeing my baby knocked out in a hospital bed brought tears to my eyes.  Such a sad sight.  

My heart and thoughts were with all the families with sick kids.  I truly couldn't stop thinking about how much strength it takes.  Here my boy is getting 3 stitches and I could hardly hold the tears back.  I am so grateful for my family's health.  A few hours after we arrived and Sawyer had time to come to we were home.  Fingers crossed he heals quickly and doesn't get a scar.

Day 7 of 21: the Pantry...only the second most dreaded spot

Oh the shame

This is my pantry.  I have never thought it was big enough or set up properly.  I think I have used those as excuses for long enough.  I have no plans of moving or remodeling any time soon so it's time to just make this pantry my bitch!

here are my before shots

apparently when things fall off the shelves the plan is to just leave them there...same as taking the last of something out of the box.

Pretty bad huh!?!?

I took everything out...washed all the shelves, walls, etc...  I will even admit the higher shelves had dust and spiderwebs towards the back.  So gross.

I threw out 4 large black bags of expired food or stuff that was just gross and we never ate.  The majority of the expired stuff was up in 09!!!  

Lots of breaks for snacking....in fact I ate this all day

half a day later....done!  I was very tempted to paint in here.  It's very rough looking but I didn't want all the crap sitting around for a week so I went with contact paper.  I had plenty leftover from the drawer challenges.  Quick question:  is contact paper white trash-esque??  My husband swears contact paper is white trashy but I beg to differ!!!

Now I was super proud of this before/after challenge until I saw this one at House of Smiths

It is AMAZING!!  She did paint, bonus points for her...and all those adorable vinyl labeled jars have further convinced me of my need for a Silhouette machine!

Linking up for the 21 Day Challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons

Day 12 of 21: the spice cabinet

I sort of did my spice cabinet ahead of time sort of by accident.  You see my pantry spilled over into my cabinets when I ran out of pantry space.  So when my pantry was getting cleaned I decided to get the pantry stuff out of the spice cabinet.  Being in the purge moment I didn't snap a picture of it in the cabinet but all this was in it (watching The View while cleaning lol)

Before

I was quite surprised at how much crap we had!  I threw out a trash bag full of expired stuff, scuzzy stuff, stuff we hadn't used in forever.  I found tons of duplicates which means that I couldn't find it, assumed I was out and bought more (Christmas baking stuff!)  In all honesty though...my husband is a spice feign...not me!

and After!

Linking up to A Bowl Full of Lemons

Day 8 of 21: the Coat Closet

Another easy one because I was attacked during nesting.  It actually still looked perfect so all I had to do was snap a picture :)

I wish I would have thought to take before pictures because this closet was AWFUL!  The tupperware is full of blankets that were spilling all over the place, we had a ton of empty boxes shoved in here and those dvds were all over the floor!  It was ridiculous!  Our dvd collection is pretty small after our house was burglarized.  After having hundreds stolen it makes you not want to buy any more!  I put those shelves in all by myself and it makes it soooo much better in there!  Should have done it months before!

again, linking up to A Bowl Full of Lemons

Day 6 of 21: Dresser Drawers

Day 6 was Dressers...I am a super slob but I actually keep my drawers very tidy...not sure how or why but they always look good.  The top of my dresser is obviously another story!  I hate this dresser.  I have had it since I was 16 and truly the only thing I keep in it is pajamas and shorts.  It has an empty drawer at the moment actually.  

Before

 Yes, that is a tooth :) found it on top of the dresser!

and after!

I didn't bother with the boy's dresser since Sawyer has decided that taking everything out of it is a total blast so I typically refold and put everything back in every few days keeping it VERY tidy.  

Linking to A Bowl Full of Lemons...head on over if you want to join in the 21 day challenge or to see other entries!

Day 4 of 21: Linen Closets

I actually had this in the bag!  It was another area that I tackled during nesting!  It just so happened that our cousin's church was wanting donations for a church sale so it motivated me to get rid of my stuff.  I packed up 4 bags of linens!  It was truly unreal and ridiculous how much I have accumulated.  I kept a back up set of sheets for each bed and probably more blankets than need be but I did get rid of a lot.  

Before...could use a little tidying but not too bad!

and after...I did laundry so more kids blankets.  The tupperware holds sheets and blankets.  Moved the baby tub to the cabinet below.

more blankets in tupperware, sleeping bag and the baby tub

Linking up to A Bowl Full of Lemons

Day 9 & 10 of 21: the dungeon...I mean laundry room!

So I am obviously really far behind!  Fret not I am not all that far behind on the challenges...2 or 3 days I did miss...I think.  I am far behind on the blog side which I suppose is the better to be behind on!

Day 10 was the laundry room...Day 9 was your kid's toys or your toys so I knew I would need to do my toys over the kids but I put it off...then Day 10 popped up with Laundry Room...which also happens to double as my toy room so I couldn't put it off any longer.

Without further ado...

This room is my catch all.  No where to put something?  Just toss it in the laundry room.  The before pictures are are so embarrassing!  This room has actually been a work in progress since the great nesting of October 2010 and got about 3/4 done before Dex made his debut.  Now that he is here I need to get it finished up.  

The view walking in....sweet baby Jesus that is bad.  What you can't see is the closet is open because there is so much yarn falling out it won't close!

Can you even see the floor??? ummm nope, yeah I didn't think so!

  Good thing I was in such a rush to install those shelves only for everything to get tossed on the floor.

The only part left that needs to get painted!  The washer was too heavy to move when I was pregnant and I was too fat to stretch any further than you see.  

Check out the top of the washing machine!  Do I really need all 2,341 bottles of soap?  The front of the washer is really lovely as well.  Why didn't I just wipe off that soap months ago?

Top of the dryer

and 2.5 hours later....TADA!!  that hideous green carpet is visible!  

Yes I washed ALL of that laundry on the floor!  and if I am being honest I had done about 8-10 loads before that before picture was taken!

 Before Project Makeover Craft Room began I had a desk in here but I donated it to a church sale thinking I'd be getting my countertop in here sooner.  The stuff on the floor was in/on the desk.

Top of washer...yes that is a melted chocolate bar

 and after...oooh so clean 

 closet!  I put these shelves in (yep...by myself) when I was nesting like crazy!  This seriously gave me so much more storage space!  

and the yarn...I love that it is all tucked away...I hate that some of  the cubbies are 2 deep and I can't see the back stuff!

Sooooo for those of you that have been around since October-ish know I have been battling this room for some time!  I obviously went with blue paint which surprises me because I had originally totally thought I would go with green but I bought both in case (ouch $30 I didn't need to spend) as you can see I didn't even open the green!  I am still torn on my secondary storage.  Part of me says I clearly have enough crap just stick with what I have and stop shopping.  The other part of me says let's be realistic, I still have the stuff on the floor and I might have another 10 or so skeins of yarn littered around the house.  I just can't decide if I should get another cupboard type thing like I already have or something else.  I do love that the doors shut containing the mess and keeping my yarn dust free or do I want something like this?

Decisions, decisions!  On a positive note I have a $100 gift card and also a $75 Home Depot card soooo I am off to order my countertop this week!  Can't wait to get it in there!  The washer and dryer are going to get dropped down on the floor and the counter will be over the tops of them.  I will only have chair space in between the 2 which sort of sucks but it'll be ok!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my scuz!