We have been blogging for 3 months now and to celebrate this milestone we are hosting our first giveaway! Many blog experts say that the first 3 months are the most difficult when you start blogging and many people simply get tired and give up. We didn’t! We would like to say thanks to all of you who have been reading our blog, posting comments, sending emails, sharing stories and suggestions. Thanks to Blueloom we met many nice people from around the world.

With spring in the air, we thought it would be a great idea to help you with spring cleaning. We can’t offer you a free cleaning service but to get you started, we are giving away great cleaning products: Swiffer Sweeper dry sweeping cloths, Sweeper Dusters Starter Kit and a set of 4 large Micro Fiber All Purpose Towels. Share your spring cleaning tips with us and get a chance to win the prize.

Set of 4 Micro Fiber All Purpose Towels, great for dusting furniture.

Two boxes of Swiffer Sweeper dry cloths, great for cleaning hardwood floors.

GIVEAWAY PRIZE AND DETAILS

• 2 boxes of Swiffer Sweeper dry sweeping cloths (total of 32 cloths)
• Sweeper Dusters Starter Kit (contains one handle and 5 disposable dusters)
• 4 large Micro Fiber Ultra Absorbent All Purpose Towels

Winner - One winner will be announced the week of Apr 19

To Enter - Leave a comment and share spring cleaning tips with us.

Giveaway closes- Apr 17, 2010,  8pm EST

Shipping- Canada and 48 lower US states only

Giveaway rules- Only one entry per e-mail address is permitted.

Thanks for participating and good luck everyone!

We love to change our front door planter arrangement according to the season. Last fall we found the Sinamay mesh rolls at a local gift shop and used it for our Thanksgiving planter. You can buy Sinamay mesh online, just search for sinamay mesh ribbon. Sinamay rolls come in many sizes and all colors.

Sinamay works great for any outdoor floral arrangement because it doesn't absorb moisture so the shape of your bow will always stay the same even during rainy days. We used Sinamay last fall for our pumpkin arrangement for the front door. Take a look.

Our front door planter, Thanksgiving 2009.

It took less than 20 minutes to put this arrangement together. We reused a natural plant that was originally in our backyard during summer and put a real pumpkin on top of it. To finish it off, we added a very simple Sinamay bow.

We did some research on the internet and it seems that there are many ideas where you can use Sinamay in your decorating projects, for example to wrap gifts, wine bottles, fresh flowers, decorate outdoor planters, add holiday sparkle to your Christmas tree, wreath or even staircase, decorate tables for the holidays and weddings.

We also came across Rhonda's blog on floral design and fell in love with her outdoor planter. What a great first impression to have something like this by the front door to you home or business. Click on the photograph to visit Rhonda's blog for more creative ideas.

Rhonda's outdoor planter at floralartist.blog spot.com

Hope you got inspired!

From modern, contemporary, country to traditional, European kitchens represent all design styles. Homes in Europe tend to be smaller than in North America and many people live in apartments.

You may think smaller kitchens are more difficult to decorate but their designs are amazing. Notice unique colors, textures and great details in flooring, backsplash and countertop design.

Introducing fab kitchens from Italy, Poland and Sweden.

Great built-in wine storage

Surprising choice of color and texture, very unique backsplash

Refreshing green, simple and clean lines

Who said blue is a cold color?

Country charm - great idea for a cottage

Elegant kitchen island and flooring

Another blue masterpiece - amazing tiles

Great blue accent wall - simple and charming

Wow, this color in the kitchen?  Amazing! Looks great with stainless steel appliances.

Great quality kitchen floor and table

Did you notice that blue is a popular accent color in their kitchens? Europeans pay attention to detail and make smaller kitchens look amazing. Hope you found your inspiration!

It's been a busy week but we managed to do some shopping and decorate our accent table in the living room. We found this cool Welcome sign, our first lettered piece and also picked up starfish from a local gift shop for $3.00 each. We also used some existing coffee table books.

We love to buy books when we travel. Chicago in Photographs and Montreal remind us of our recent trips and are great coffee table or in this case accent table books.

Are you a fan of accent tables?

Remember our post on Decorating with baskets? We mentioned an armoire and promised to show you how we have converted it to a wardrobe. We bought an entertainment armoire (originally designed for TV and media) and it's now an elegant wardrobe in our hallway. Traditionally, European homes have wardrobes, not built in closets, so we wanted that familiar look in our new home. Wardrobes used to be very common many years ago before closets became popular. Some older homes don't even have closets. Armoires are now mostly decorative but you can also use them for storage. Using armoire to hang your jackets and coats is an aesthetic option and a great solution if you are short on storage space, plus when you move, you take it with you. It's also a nice piece of furniture to have.

This armoire was designed for a TV/media and it was ready to plug it in. We saw another purpose.

How to convert an armoire to a wardrobe:

We bought two Alexandria Molding baseboards from Home Depot ($5.53 each), one wooden bar and Minwax wood finish for $6.55 to stain them.

* Hint: staining must be done in a well ventilated area, make sure to wear gloves.

We drilled a hole in each baseboard to install the hanging bar and attached baseboards to armoire using screws.

We use wooden hangers in our armoire. Their colors match the armoire and they hold heavy jackets better than plastic hangers.  We also keep the longest jackets and coats on one side of the armoire and have a basket on the other side for small accessories.

If you consider converting an armoire to a wardrobe, we strongly recommend it. It's fairly simple and inexpensive and it will look elegant in your hallway. It's a great center piece just like a fireplace in a family room.  If we ever move, we will take the armoire with us, and we can always use it for TV/media in the future, so it's an investment.

If you have converted an armoire to a wardrobe and would like to share your pics, just email us. We will be glad to post them. Good luck with your projects!

When we bought our raised bungalow, we inherited the 70s style kitchen with very dark cabinets, no backsplash and laminate countertop that looked like wood paneling. Kitchen window was also original in a very good shape but dark brown. We decided to replace the window and refinish cabinets instead of installing new ones. The only good thing about our 70s style cabinets was that they were maple wood, so we could send and paint them.

Here is the kitchen before:

First, we removed all cupboards and hardware.  We used electric sender to send cabinets to bare wood. It was a very time consuming process but eventually saved us a lot of money, and we were pleased with the result.

This is how the cabinets look like after sending. They were ready to be painted.

Once our window was replaces, we installed two identical light fixtures above the sink. We paid lesss than $100 for both lamps at Home Depot.

New light fixtures

We met Le from Australia when she came to visit Blueloom. Today we would like to introduce her great blog to you.

Home Front Inspiration is about sharing ideas and all things designed for the home front and you. Le says it’s a place to save images and ideas that one day will inspire some aspects of design and function for their own home.

Le has a great giveway open until Feb 28th. Visit Le's blog to win Jac Coates Cards.

Le loves to share pictures of beautiful homes and interior decorating ideas. Thanks to Home Front Inspiration we get a chance to see how Australians live and design their homes. We hope you will enjoy Home Front Inspiration as much as we do.

Thanks Le for a great giveaway!

We love to decorate with natural products such as dried floral.  We use elegant natural accent balls and flowers to make custom floral arrangements. We got inspiration for this project from our friend who used dried floral in baskets.

Pod mushroom stems & dried flowers

We made our arrangement using IKEA bowl we got 10 years ago! We bought pod mushroom stems and dried flowers and cut the stems. Here is our coffee table floral arrangement.

For your dry floral projects we recommend Michaels where you can find a big selection of elegant flowers and accent balls. Michaels offers several varieties of covered balls, pine cones, leaves, and assorted dried flowers. You can also use them to add beauty to a wreath.

Do you use dried floral in your home decor projects?  We would love to hear from you.

Good luck with your projects!

We bought a set of three frames for our home office and decided to use pictures from our trips to remind us of places we love. Here are the pictures we chose for the frames.

And here are the same pictures after using sepia tone.

Do you like the sepia effect?  Here is how you can convert your digital photographs to sepia tone in Adobe Photoshop:

1. Open picture in Adobe Photoshop.
2. Go to Image, choose Adjustments and then Desaturate. This will turn color picture into black and white.
3. Go to Image, choose Adjustments and then Variations.
4. Click on More Yellow once.
5. Click on More Red once.
6. Click OK.

Brighter photographs are better for creating the sepia tone. You can also play with different sepia tones like More Blue or More Green. Have fun!

p.s. Our project is not finished yet. We are visiting London, UK this spring so there will be more great pics from our trip. Stay tuned.

Time to take a break from the renovations and decorating posts. Olympic Winter Games start tomorrow.  Vancouver and Whistler, BC will welcome athletes from around the world.

Olympic Games information center in Whistler, 2008

We had a chance to visit Vancouver and Whistler in 2008. Here are some pics from our trip to British Columbia.

Beautiful Rockies

VANCOUVER

WHISTLER

We absolutely loved Whistler. It's a small ski resort just 2,5 h north of Vancouver where you can golf and ski the same day.  We stayed in Whistler and did day trips to Vancouver. The drive was great with fantastic views.

Driving back to Whistler