CSN Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations to Entry #47

Kelly

"I want to organize some books!"

Kelly, I hope you can find some bookends or shelves to help you with your spring project!

I thought that it would be interesting to read what other people had planned for their spring projects...and it was...but I think it backfired!

For every idea I read, it reminded me of all the other things I need to accomplish this spring! Will it motivate me? Or inspire me to crawl into bed with a movie and ignore the world?? Only time will tell, I suppose!

Thanks for playing, everyone!

March Blog of the Month – Miss Mustard Seed

I am thrilled to feature one of my all-time favorite blogs – Miss Mustard Seed – as the RDH March Blog of the month.

I don’t remember exactly when or how I discovered Marian’s blog, but I do know she has been an inspiration to me and to so many other followers – demonstrating what is possible when you pursue your dreams with grace and perseverance.

My favorite features of Miss Mustard Seed include the valuable painting information, beautiful pictures, upholstering tips, sewing ideas, and small business advice which Marian so generously shares.

Besides authoring Miss Mustard Seed, Marian also is a freelance writer for HGTV.com and sells her finds and creations in three retail spaces. I honestly don’t know how she does it all!

A bit of trivia which many of you may not know is that Marian and I share a “color connection.”

Not long after I found Miss Mustard Seed, Marian shared pictures of her newly repainted living and dining rooms. Her color of choice was SW Aria Ivory. As most of my house is painted with this same color, I left a comment telling her how much I too loved SW Aria Ivory.

The irony of this story is that unbeknownst to either of us, Marian had used my living room which had been featured in Women’s Day Budget Decorating, as her inspiration for her color choice. She had received a copy of the magazine from her mother-in-law and saved the article.

Women's Day Budget Decorating / Photographer - Michael Partenio

Stylist - Donna Talley, Regional Editor and Producer for Meredith Publications

After visiting my blog, Marian quickly figured out the connection and was kind enough to let me know about our color bond. In fact, she recently posted about her plans to repaint the blue wall in her beautiful dining room with SW Aria Ivory.

I hope you will stop by Miss Mustard Seed to learn how to – as Marian’s blog title says – “move mountains in your home.” I know you will be so glad you did!

Dining with Daffodils

Daffodils are out! At least at our local grocery store. There's nothing that makes the dining room brighter than a dozen are so smiling daffodils. 

We spend a lot of time in our dining room. We enjoy our meals there of course. Since we expanded the table, we've also been using it for many other pursuits. The large flat workspace has proven great for sewing projects, wrapping gifts, sorting through piles of paper in preparing our taxes, and Mike even used it recently to assemble a poster for a work conference. 

However, the most wonderful thing about the expanded table is that there is plenty of room for two bouncy chairs! This allows us to be able to sit down to meals - together - much more often. Although this has always been important to us, it became harder to do with two newborn sweetie pie babies. xo 

The babies gaze up at the chandelier as if it were a large mobile.  When their interest begins to wane, we adjust the dimmer which creates different sparkles and hues. With all that gazing, I've had to put 'dust and clean chandelier' on my to do list. 

Happy daffodils (even the grocery store variety) to you!