Ameriwood Buffet with Sliding Doors

Let me start off by saying I have a weird fascination with buffets (not food but tables); I think it may have something to do with growing up in a home where the china cabinet was always my mother's pride and joy, she displayed all the china, glasses and trinkets so neatly in it, I was always so intrigued by that. When the hubby and I moved into our apartment a few years ago, the first thing I requested was a buffet table (a smaller version of a china cabinet) and just like my mother I neatly placed all our china and glasses in it and it was my little pride and joy too, the buffet was mine and all the things in it were especially collected by me! Well, when we moved into our new home the buffet moved into the garage because it really didn’t fit well in our new dining area, this lack of a buffet table has been bothering me for over a month now. Finding a reasonably priced buffet that would fit perfectly in our dining area has been to say the least, challenging; but a few days ago I found one and although I have to wait a week to receive it, I'm already in love with it! I picked this buffet because the dimensions are perfect, it's skinny, tall and long and the shelves are adjustable. I picked a white finish (it also comes in espresso) because I was noticing a pattern of espresso furniture throughout or home, so I wanted to change things up a bit. What do you think?

Ameriwood Buffet with Sliding Doors

Walmart.com 

• Buffet with Sliding Doors 
• High Gloss White finish 
• Sliding glass doors provide concealed and displayed storage that stays out of your way 
• Adjustable shelves provide storage flexibility 
• Easy to assemble 
• Overall Dimensions: 36'' H x 47'' W x 15.8'' D

The Launch of Quaintly Amusing & Giveaway!

Celebrating! The Launch of Quaintly Amusing
I am happy to announce that after countless trials and much hard work hunting for the perfect party supplies and decor, I have decided to offer my “quaintly amusing” finds for all to buy!

Planning the perfect party isn’t easy and surely enough accessorizing your perfect day can be daunting. Finding all the right accessories at one store is impossible. In fact, those perfect party gems or “quaintly amusing” treasures are often scattered amongst thousands of distributors, stores and sites. As a purveyor of quirky, unique and fun party supplies, I only feel it’s fair to pass these goodies along to be enjoyed and cherished by others.

The Quaintly Amusing  Story
I’m a bit of a scavenger hunter and I love finding party supplies, especially items that no one would every necessarily consider using as part of a party. After planning my son's 1st birthday party I received tons of emails and requests from party planning moms looking for some of the same products and vendors I used. The majority of the time, I’m asked if there are any leftover items that I would be willing to sell; and the answer is yes, I do! 

I have affectionately named my new shop Quaintly Amusing and I will be selling party supplies and party decor. To me, Quaintly Amusing is the expression of the precious moments created by the unique décor and accessories used to detail a party in order for it to come to life. I love party planning and I appreciate the memories created by the special accents of whimsy. Quaintly Amusing celebrates those extra touches. Quaintly Amusing celebrates the details.

I hope to eventually expand and have been getting some great advice from my friend and Marketing Consultant, Caroline. I already have a few things listed (mostly reserved listings) at my shop, but plan on adding a lot more items in the following few weeks. With Quaintly Amusing, I hope to provide the items, products and décor that will one day be part of everyone’s quaintly amusing party or event.

Quaintly Amusing finds will be available on Etsy, simply the craftiest website out there!

The Big Giveaway!

No celebration would be complete without a big giveaway! As a great big thank you to all my followers and party planning mommies, I'm having a Quaintly Amusing Giveaway! One lucky follower will receive a $50 Etsy shopping spree, on me!

The winner can pick an item or items from “any” Etsy Shop in the amount of $50 dollars and I will gladly pay for the purchase!

To enter this giveaway:

• Become a follower on this blog and leave a comment on this post letting me know that you are a new follower. Or if you are already a follower just leave a comment on this post letting me know that you are.
• Join Etsy.com and add Quaintly Amusing to your favorite shops for 2 extra entries.
• Follow Quaintly Amusing on Facebook and/or Twitter for 1 extra entry (each).
• Add Quaintly Amusing's button to your blog for 1 extra entry.
• Post a link of this giveaway on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc for 1 extra entry for each link posted.

This giveaway will end at midnight February 14th 2011 and the winner will be announced on February 15th 2011. Please make sure to stop by on February 15th to see if you're the lucky winner. You can also contact me in advance through my "contact me" button if you would like me to email you if you're the lucky winner!
Goodluck!

 

<a border="0" href="http://www.etsy.com/shop/QuaintlyAmusing//" target="_blank"><img src="http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii105/luckydoll55/blogbutton-1.jpg?t=1279174564" /></a><br />

Hard-wiring a pendant lamp...

When I purchased the Eden Pendant Lamp from CB2 I already knew that it was going to take some adjusting to make it work in our space. The Eden lamp is actually a plug-in lamp and we needed to hard-wire it as a permanent fixture. After reading a few tutorials hubby and I decided we would hard-wire the lamp ourselves, so on Saturday we crossed our fingers and got to work!

Our ceiling outlet box was already installed when we bought the house, which made this process super easy!

I cut the lamp cord leaving more than enough to practice (then we trimmed it to size)!

I stripped the coating off the cord to expose the wires

at this point we cut all power to the dining area.

Hubby installed the canopy mount.

Before installing the canopy plate and fixture we checked to make sure the fixture worked!

Hubby installed the canopy and fixture.

I installed the drum shade

and in less than an hour we hard-wired a pendant lamp.

The Elephants Are Back!

JD loves elephants, so now that the elephants are back at the Los Angeles Zoo we had to stop by and pay them a visit!

Porch Railing Excitement!

I've realized that in the small amount of time we've owned our home, I find myself getting excited over things I never imagined I would. For example, we have a small porch with steps but we have no porch railing, it looks like at one point there was railing but I can only imagine what it may have looked like (our new home is over 50 years old). I had mentioned to hubby when we first moved in that a porch railing would not only look really nice but it would make our porch a lot safer; I even drove around the neighborhood looking at railings and ironically found our house's twin and it had a really cute porch railing! So, on Tuesday hubby took me by surprise, he had made an appointment with a company to come out today and give us a free estimate on railing. I actually wanted to call in sick today so I could be there for the estimate, I'm just so super excited about porch railing; is that weird?

Our Porch

What I would love our porch to look like!

Mr. "Pa-Pa" Head

We bought JD a Mr. Potato Head for Christmas and he absolutely loves him, whenever he misplaces him he asks “Onsta (Donde) Pa-Pa” which means where's the potato? For a while we just thought he was asking for daddy (he calls daddy Papa too) but we eventually caught on! Well, yesterday I stopped by Ross during my lunch, just to browse of course and came across not one but three Mr. Potato Heads with over 40 accessories* and as you may have guessed by now I couldn’t help but to buy them for JD; now when his friends come over everyone has their own Mr.“Pa-Pa” Head to play with.

Tubby Tater

 

Officer Spud

Dr. Mrs. Potato Head

*Officer Spud and Dr. Mrs. Potato Head came in a set with over 35 accessories for $14.99. Tubby Tater came as shown for $6.99.

Wordless Wednesday

Eden Pendant Lamp

Lately I've become obsessed with home decor blogs and websites and have come across some really interesting ideas. Our living room and dining area are combined and we've been looking for a way to define the room and give each area its own personality. One of my favorite ideas has been to add a pendant light to the dining area, it's a great way to divide up the space in a large room; luckily we have recessed lighting and it looks like the previous owners may have considered adding a dining room fixture because there is already an electrical box with a wall plate in the dining area. So in my search for lighting (hubby left this one to me) I fell in love with drum shade pendants. After gasping at the prices of drum shades ($200-$400) for a couple of days, I was completely surprised when I came across the pendant shown below at CB2 for $49.95! I ordered the drum shade pendant about a week ago and it arrived today, I can't wait to install it!

 * Special thanks to Gaby for giving me a Crate & Barrel Giftcard for my birthday, I was able to use it at CB2.com also!

My favorite girls...

Today my goddaughters spent the entire day with us and we had such a great time! Life has been so busy lately that we haven't had a chance to just stay home, relax and enjoy our new home but today we got to do all that and more. We had breakfast together, the girls made homemade lemonade (the perks of having a seedless lemon tree), we grilled hot dogs, baked brownies and just like old times the they begged to spend the night. So here I am watching movies in my PJ's with my favorite girls.