New Round of Voting at Layla Grayce

The Layla Grayce "Design Your Dream Room" contest is now in the third phase of voting and for the next two weeks, it's all about Dream Nurseries. I am done having kids, but this would have been a fun thing to have back when I had mine, although I never really did a true nursery as neither of my kids ever slept in a crib....seems like they went from babies to toddlers very quickly, so a nursery never materialized. Anyway, I had fun creating what 'might' have been my dream nursery and hey, there's always grandkids....but not for a while yet!!

As always, I would really appreciate your vote!! Thanks to all of you, I made it into the top 25 out of 380 entries (13th and 15th) with my last submissions for the Dream Living Room phase, and they choose from the top 25 to select a first, second and third place winner! They haven't announced winners for that phase yet, keeping fingers crossed! So please consider voting for me in this round too! I thank you immensely!

World Music

This is new and interesting.........

Read about it here

Target Missed: No Nate on the Shelves

All across blogland, for the past six months, we have all been hearing and celebrating the hype surrounding the launch of the Nate Berkus for Target collection, set to launch YESTERDAY Oct. 21st. At 10:00 AM, I drove to my nearest Target (a Super Target, mind you) soooo excited to see the new collection, take pics and blog my heart out about it.....only to find.....NOTHING!! There was no sign of Nate anywhere in the store. I just knew that couldn't be right, they probably had some big fancy display set somewhere prominently in the store to herald the arrival of NATE! After a while of searching in vain, I asked a 'team member' about the situation and she said, very casually, "oh, yea....it might be in tomorrow." Really?! So, I'm set to head back in about 10 minutes here and see if indeed, anything came in. I guess this is happening all across the country, as I have see a few other posts about it. Just finished reading Lynda's post over at FOCAL POINT where she made some excellent points about how Target 'should' have handled this. Regardless, I know the collection will hit the shelves sooner or later, so I'm still excited to see it in person.

LOVE this

All right, I'm off to go check it out.....if it's there!

Another Olioboard for Layla Grayce's "Design your Dream Room" challenge

I talked about this contest in my last post and just wanted to let you know I made another moodboard that I entered.

Modharaja

If you saw my last post and then went and voted for my entry, I want to sincerely thank you VERY MUCH! Your support means the world to me! And if you want to go vote for my latest entry here, I would be most grateful! If you make your own board to enter the contest, let me know so I can vote for you too!

Express Your Style: Layla Grayce and Olioboard "Design Your Dream Room" Contest

In case you haven't heard, Layla Grayce has teamed with Olioboard to bring us the "Design Your Dream  Room" contest. Last week it was bedrooms, this week it's the living room, then it will be a nursery and finally, a dining room. Each week has a new sponsor and judge, and this time around it's none other than the incomparable Jonathan Adler!! There are over $4,000 in prizes and you can enter each week as many rooms as you can create! I entered two last week for the "Dream Bedroom" portion of the contest, here are my boards:

Gypsy Chic

and

Luxe Modern Lounge

If you've never used Olioboard, it's a really fun way to create rooms and explore looks you might never get to create in 'real life.' I blogged about my first ever Olioboard here.

I didn't win, but it was still fun to put these rooms together and see what other people have come up with.... I love seeing how other people design a room.....it's kinda like driving around at night, hoping people have their curtains open and the lights on so you can see in......please tell me I'm not alone and that didn't sound too weird!

Anyway, I entered again this week for the Dream Living Room and this is the moodboard I came up with:

 Bohoco

You can head over to Layla Grayce right now and create a board of your own and hey, while you're there you might as well vote for my entry too! I would love you forever if you did! Thanks a million....:-)

And the winner is....we'll try this again!

So last week I announced the winner of my first ever giveaway of a Novica giftcard and I had announced the winner....twice....and the prize was never claimed. So, I chose another winner today and the lucky person is......SJ at Homemaker on a Dime!! Hey SJ, congratulations! Shoot me an email and I'll give you the details on your giftcard......again, thanks to all who entered!

Winner announced....going, going, gone!

Hey all, a few days ago I announced the winner of my Novica giveaway here. I still haven't heard back from the winner yet and if I don't by tomorrow at midnight, an alternative winner will be chosen, so you might still get lucky if you entered! The last winner drawn at random was MelMorgan4. Again, if this is you please contact me to claim your prize. And please leave your contact info so I can get ahold of you! Thanks again all for entering!

Novica Review Part 2 and a Winner!!

Thanks everybody for participating in my first ever giveaway!! It was a really great experience and I learned a bit more about a company doing great things. If you aren't familiar with Novica, they are in association with National Geographic to work with artisans around the globe for fair trade. Partnering with them on this giveaway gave me the chance to browse their website more extensively and I was surprised at the variety of product they had, as I mentioned in my earlier review, here. Browse their line of Peruvian necklaces and you are sure to find something you like. Looking for the perfect gift for your boss or co-worker? Novica has a great selection of gifts and you can choose a price point, like say $30 or less and it will pull up all the items in that price range. Really unique items, too.

So for my review, I ordered these pillow covers, which come in a pair:

I waited about two weeks to receive my order, which wasn't bad considering it shipped directly from India. It arrived in a cardboard envelope, and inside was wrapped in a nice heavy paper, pretty ribbon and a small envelope.

 

 Inside the small envelope were a small booklet, a postcard and my shipping slip.

 The booklet contained some information about the pillow covers I ordered........

This is the postcard, which I love! I have long heard about the Bikaner Camel Festival, where they shave the camels fur into intricate shapes and designs. Don't know if that's what is being depicted here, but check this out:

Cool, huh? As I understand, it doesn't harm the camel in any way...just a really fancy haircut!! I digress.....

The back of the postcard had a hand written message...love the native script!

Even the ribbon tying the package was beautiful.

And here are my pillow covers.

I LOVE them! Much more saturated than I thought they would be, but that's a good thing. The color is beautiful, the embroidery meticulous. I couldn't be happier with the overall presentation of the product, from browsing, to ordering, to receiving, the whole experience was one I thoroughly enjoyed!

As part of my review, one reader was selected at random to receive a gift card to shop Novica's website and without further ado, the winner is....
                        
                                                 drumroll please.......................................

MelMorgan4!!!!

Congratulations!

If this is you, please e-mail me to claim your prize.

Thanks to Novica for partnering with me to bring ya'll this giveaway and thanks to all who entered!