Congrats to our FLOR Winner...

Many congratulations to commenter #5, HisBirdie (Ali). The winner of my very first bloggity blog give away and a 5x7 rug (12 tiles) from FLOR.




You will have to send us some pictures of what you do with your new FLOR!!

Congrats again and thanks to all who commented!

--Coastin anon

Now you can be FLOR'd

As you know from my various posts, I am a big fan of FLOR, the modular flooring tiling system that is easy on your budget, your time and the planet.

Now, I am excited to announce my very first ever bloggity blog giveaway....

dun-dee-dee-dun........

a 5x7 FLOR rug from their new fall collection!!

How exciting is that???

Here's how it works...comment (once only please) below on which of the following styles listed below you would like to win and include how you would use it in your home...i.e. would you customize it further? What colors would you choose?

The contest closes next Friday, September 25, 2009 and the winner, who will be randomly selected using the fascinating system over at random.org, will be announced on Monday, September 28, 2009.

Here are the rugs that are eligible for the giveaway:

All Square
All Bark No Bite
Arachnophobia (Martha Stewart collection)
Best of Both Wools
Fez
Pop Tartin
Squared Silly

Best of luck to you all!!

Coasting anon

Rearranging

We spent the better part of the afternoon the other weekend moving around our furniture in our room while the little guy napped. Of course, this is all part of The Great Master Bedroom Redo of '09.

Neither one of us wanted to move things around multiple times, so we took advantage of the Pottery Barn Room Designer Tool to help us map out the current furniture in our space. Since the pre-measured furniture they have in the tool was a bit different from ours, I used my trusty scale rule to measure out furniture that was the correct size.


So here is what we came up with:

If you go back to the original post, you can see that we basically just moved the bed and side tables 90 degrees to the left. The bed is blocking two windows now, but there is no choice, you either are off center and block one window, or you are centered and block two.

This has really opened up the room believe it or not. When you are in bed the room seems to go on forever and when you look at it from the entrydoor, the same effect takes place.

Our next task is to tape and paint...we are painting the trim a light vanilla color and the walls a light cream. We already know what the colors will look like because they are the exact colors that my Mother-in-Law has in her living room. Hopefully that will really help lighten up the space.

We're floored...again!

If you recall, when we did the nursery for Little G, we used FLOR tiles because I had seen a demonstration of them on the Martha Stewart show. If you will also recall, I had grand plans for cutting my FLOR tiles into an intricate pattern and once I tried cutting the tiles I decided to go with plan B.

Plan B has worked well for us, so we decided to get some FLOR tiles for our great bedroom redo of '09. FLOR has some really awesome new styles that they have introduced this Fall including:

A La Mode with its lovely blue and brown tones installed in a parquet pattern:



Or Best of Both Wools shown here in Dorset Stripe and Suffolk Stripe in alternating rows...or below in Dorset Stripe in a parquet pattern:





In the end, we decided to go with the 5x7' Martha Stewart Collection Landscape Rug Kit in Acorn shown below:



Since we opted for only a 5x7 rug, that meant we were working with only 12 tiles and I didn't think the checkerboard pattern would match our style in an area rug, so I decided to have the shaggier rug in the center surrounded by a 1/2 tile border of the shorter shag.

Our tiles were shipped right after placing the order and were at our door in only a few days.



Upon opening the box, there were instructions, an introductory letter from Martha Stewart and an envelope of FLOR Dots, which are the adhesive you use to stick the tiles to each other:

Here you can see that the back of each tile has a sticker on it with the name of the tile and the color as well as some arrows to indicate the pile of the rug. This way, if you are putting the same tiles all next to each other, you can make sure the pieces all flow the same direction:

Here are some of the velvet twist FLOR tiles as they arrived out of the box:

Also in the box was a handy metal ruler. I hadn't purchased the ruler the last time I got the FLOR tiles and I should have. Since it is a metal ruler, you don't have to worry about the carpet knife getting caught on it when you are scoring your tiles:

Also, the back of the ruler has these convenient markings for 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2 tiles...thereby eliminating any math you might have to do to split the tiles...which are 19 inches and change (rather than a nice, easily calculable 20" even):

The Short Shag tiles came out of the box a bit squished:

You can see the pile a bit better once I ran my hand through it:

So now it was time to get down to the business of cutting these things...I was a bit nervous because last time it was a disaster and I didn't have any extra tiles this time to work with. I placed the ruler on the back of the tile and marked the half length:

Then I took my trusty carpet knife:

And promptly cut the square inaccurately. You can see here that my knife skipped a bit so I had to go back and fix the cut. This worked out ok in the end because I was abutting the cut edge to a short shag rug with a taller pile that could hide my mistake...but if I were lining up the shorter piles squares next to each other, I would really have to make sure my cuts were exactly perfect:

I, thankfully, got the hang of cutting the tiles and was able to move on to separating the cuts. Once you score the cut a few times, you fold over the tile and separate the carpet...it's as easy as that:

The entire process of cutting the 6 tiles I needed for the border of my rug took about 20 minutes...then I was ready to lay them out on the floor and get ready to put the rug together:

I was working by myself so I don't have a picture of me attaching the FLOR dots to the tiles, but it is super easy. Since I had a custom design, I did need a few extra dots, but I had them from my last project so I was all set. One of the great things about the FLOR tiles is that they attach to themselves, not to the floor, so you don't mar your floor and you can easily move the area rug around once you have put it together:

One quick go over with the vacuum cleaner and you could barely tell where the seams were!

In all, from the moment I opened the box until I had vacuumed the rug and taken this picture, the process took me less than an hour...and that includes a 10 minute phone call from my sister-in-law who was coming to visit that day. I should also say, this project was completed in the time Little G took his morning nap!

I think it looks great and I am really pleased with the quality of the rug and how once I knew what I was doing, the ease of customizing it to my needs. So guess it is safe to say that THIS time, I really AM floored! (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Change is in the air

When my husband and I purchased our home, the master bedroom was painted a very dark hunter green and felt very much like a dark cave. We immediately set to work painting it what we thought was our color of choice, a dusty grayish blue. Although I really wanted the type of blue one finds in a Pottery Barn showcase room, I was unable to achieve that look in our room.


We DO have a lovely Pottery Barn comforter that was a wedding gift that we both absolutely adore and our sheets have some blue detail on them. We aren't trading the sheets in anytime soon as they were purchased on the island of Capri in Italy on our honeymoon and they are so freakin' luxuriously soft I really just want to live in them.

Below are some pics of where our room stands today. It isn't pretty. Somewhere along the way we thought it would be great to get room darkening curtains (which are a necessity because of the street lights outside our windows) in red. The only thing we have on the walls are my big ole' mirror and the furniture is black, but the bed is light brown. The floors, doors and mouldings are darker brown stained wood, but the windows themselves are lighter, more blonde, wood.

We have grand plans to redecorate this space, but it is a bit of a challenge because of the items that are non-negotiable...the black furniture, the blue comforter and sheets with blue details, the tanish brown bed and a brown rug from FLOR that should be here any day now.

Ideas include painting the walls and the trim a cream color; adding some sepia toned pictures in black, white or silver frames; changing out the light fixtures and lamps; repositioning the furniture; and getting some sort of room darkening Roman Shades in perhaps a grasscloth or linen.

I will be sure to keep you posted on the process as I am sure you will all be riveted to the computer just waiting for my updates.

Until then.

--me

View from the entryway:

A wider angle shot of the room:

The lone picture on the wall is an antique arial photo of the Swan Boats in the Boston Public Garden:

Detail on the sheets from Italy:

Two Months

You are almost two months old...you're official birthday is this Tuesday, September 8, which also happens to be your dad's and my second wedding anniversary; but since we have some downtime and you are so peacefully sleeping in your Moby Wrap snuggled up against my chest, I figured I would write down some milestones we have hit in the past two months.

First...you were born. That was awesome.

Secondly, we have conquered all sorts of public transportation starting with the Green Line way back when you were only 5 weeks old (on our way to get mommy a pedicure). Since then we have experienced the bus (coming home from downtown Roslindale), the Orange Line (to go see Daddy at work), the Red Line (I can't remember why, but I know we did it) and the Silver Line (on our way to pick up Aunt Kathryn at the airport).


You first smiled at me on Thursday, August 13 when you were only five weeks old...we were at a friend's house and you were trying out their bouncy seat and all of the sudden your face lit up like sunshine and you smiled so big at me I saw both your lovely dimples.

Since then, you have smiled lots...mostly when playing with your Gymini...but sometimes you grin wide as the sky when you see me come into your room in the morning. Your smiles and coos are my drug of choice. You have been cooing for a long time and are getting more and more vocal ever day. Your voice is soft and quiet when you aren't screaming but when you do scream, it is loud and confident and angry and full of life.

You went to your first baseball game last weekend, August 30. It was the Brockton Rocks against the Worcester Tornadoes. Dad carried you in the Moby wrap and you spit up on us so much we went through the bib AND the back-up bib so we had to buy a souvenir bib! You also screamed through the National Anthem...voicing what must have been everyone else's opinion since the lady singing wasn't very good.

We started out sponge bathing you when you first came home, but your umbilical cord came off when you were only 8 days old, so we started bathing you in your 'bucket'. You loved that but now we have even more fun bathing you in the shower with us.

You have made lots of friends at our new mommy groups and you have finally stopped crying when around other crying babies. Aunt Kathryn says you were just feeling their pain. We have learned lots of songs and games and sometimes you even like them.



You grew out of your small diapers and are now on the mediums which means you crossed the threshold to 14 pounds. And you have finally found your thumb on a consistent enough basis that we can totally count it as a skill.

Perhaps the most amazing thing that has happened is that you sleep through the night on most occasions. We have a bedtime routine that we start at 8:00 where we change your diaper and put your PJ's on. Either daddy or I feed you a bottle in the rocking chair in your nursery while the other one of us reads a book to you. When you are done, daddy swaddles you really, really tight and we lay you down in your crib (which you have been sleeping in at night since you were one month old - prior to that you were in a bassinet in our room). Sometimes you get up as early as 4:30 in the morning and want to be changed and fed, but recently you have slept as late as 5, 5:30, 6 or even 7:00!! What a wonderful blessing it has been for us to be able to sleep through the night too!

All of these accomplishments have been made before your second month birthday.

Garrison, your daddy and I love you more than we can possibly express. You are light - you are joy - you are love.

Happy birthday, son.

--Mom