Do You Houzz??

Lately I've been hooked on the Pinterest craze along with everyone else. I love browsing around looking for ideas and cool projects. Another site I'm easily becoming obsessed with as well is Houzz. Have you heard of it?

If you're looking for ideas for you home or just like looking at beautiful homes this is the website for you. I can look at these photos all day long and dream (and drool). I want them all!

You can search by room or style. They have almost every style you can think if; modern, traditional, Spanish, ect. After browsing you can create "Ideabooks" and save the images you like in each one. You're able to put notes about what you like about the room.

What even better is that each photo contains information about the room provided by the person who uploaded it; usually the architect or designer of the home. Some of the photos have information and pricing on the furniture and lighting in the room; even what paint color is used on the walls. Pretty awesome!

And it's free!! So, do you think you'll Houzz??

A Magic App

Oohh! A Magic I-phone App- I wonder what it does. Turn things into gold? Gives you a good hair day even when its 100% humidity outside? Wash all the dishes for you? No, unfortunately it doens't do any of those things but it's still pretty awesome.

It's actually called MagicPlan and it's for the IPhone 4. You can use it to draw up floor plans of your house or any room you want a floor plan of. And it's FREE!



It sounds almost to good to be true but here's how it works- just take a picture of each corner of your room and Magic Plan does the rest. It measure the walls and doors of the room and creates a plan based off the pictures you took.

If you want to do your whole house you just slide the rooms around into place and Magic Plan takes into account the wall thicknesses for you.

Sounds pretty amazing that you get a whole floor plan drawn just by taking pictures with your phone. I don't know how accurate it is; I don't know if I'd try to build a house off it. Especially if you have a lot of weird angles in your home. 

But it would be super helpful if your trying to plan furniture for your home. You could quickly and easily draw up a plan and you could see if that new couch your thinking of getting will fit in the space you want it to go. Use it to get a rough estimate for sqaure footage of material if your remoeling. If you have a rental property you could post the floor plan online for potential renters to view.

Has anyone used this App? I only have a lowly I-Phone 3G so I can't access it. Has anyone has found it helpful. Does it really work? Some of the reviews online have me curoius about it.

Should I run out and buy a 4G?

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

That is the question I was asking myself the other day. I read this article in Elle Decor about how Twitter can help boost your blog or business. They interviewed the amazing Grace Bonney, founder of Design*Sponge and talked with her about how she used Twitter to grow her brand. 


I think the article has a lot of good ideas and advice on how to tweet and what to tweet about.


For example one piece of advice I found most helpful was her rule of thirds. She suggests splitting you tweets between Promotional (like a project you just completed), personal ( ex- photographs) and content sharing (great ideas from other bloggers.)


I admit when I first started using Twitter I wasn't sure how it would help get people engaged with my blog. After reading the article I have a better idea of how I can be using Twitter to talk with people; though I still feel like I have a lot to learn. I've been trying to Tweet more often. You may have noticed that I added a Twitter feed to my blog so you can check out the action.

I do worry about tweeting to much since my Blog and Twitter are fed to my Facebook account. I don't want to drown my friends Facebook pages with blog posts and twitter tweets. (Please let me know if I am bothering you guys!)

So what are your thoughts on Twitter? Do you use it or don't see the point of it? Have you used it to grow your blog or business? Any advice?

Work It!

The weekends are usually when I get a long run in, but this past weekend I spent most of my time painting and didn't get a chance to. But I figured I got a pretty good workout anyway with all the bending and stretching painting involves. DIY'ing is a lot of work!

I've seen lists on how many calories you burn vaccuming and dusting, but I wanted to know exactly how good of a work out I got painting. I did a little research and came across this website: http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm There is a list giving calories burned for many activities including painting!



So according to the list Painting walls for 1 hour: 266 calories burned! Wow!

I started to wonder about other DIY activites and how they affect calorie counts. Here's a run down:

Welding: 207 calories

General Carpentry: 207 calories

Electrical Work/Plumbing: 207 calories

Tailoring/ General (like sewing I guess!) 147 calories

So what are you waiting for! Go DIY it up and Burn Baby Burn!



You Only Thought You Knew....

Hello Everyone! I thought I'd get away from the DIY for a minute and share a little about myself with you all. I just made 250 "followers" (thanks Rachel Sill!) and saw that over at one of my favorite blogs, Liz at Bons Temps Beignet wrote a post on "Things You Don't Know About Me".

I thought it was cute and since I haven't really posted any info about myself since my First Post Ever, I thought I'd tell you a little more about myself.

I'm an Interior Designer and work for a Commercial Architecture firm in Texas. I love what I do and I work with a lot of great people. I started my Blog so I could share with others my love for making things with my hands and my obsession for fixing up our house.

I have a wonderful husband who serves in the Air Force as a Pediatrician. We met on a blind date! He is always (well most of the time) understanding of crazy ideas I get for things to do around the house.

Then of course there is The Con-Man! Our 18 mo old son. A lot of the things I've made are for him and lately he's been trying to help me out with a lot of my projects.



And last but not least our two pets (and first babies) our dog Gracie and Kat C.C. Gracie was a Katrina Hurricane rescue and I got C.C. from the pound when she was a baby. Here they are in a rare moment of togetherness:

Some Random Facts You May Not Know-

- I like to sing but am not very good at it. Only a select few have witnessed my vocal talents.

- I also like to dance but as with the singing it's not one of my special gifts. I'll usually only do it in public if it's dark enough. So really only the Con-Man gets to enjoy my dancing skills.

- I used to run the hurdles in High School. The 100 and 300 meter. I was pretty darn good at it.

- Also in High School, one weekend I thought it would be a good idea string a ton of Mardi Gras beads together and then proceed to hang them from the ceiling. Since the ceiling in my room was 12' tall it was no small task. I'm sure my mom was thrilled.

- I can make my eyes shake back and forth really fast, like Really fast so it looks like they are vibrating.

- I LOVE chocolate! Nothing is to rich or chocolately for my taste. I have to chew gum at work to keep myself from overdosing on Hershey bars. This makes me wonder why they don't have chocolate flavored gum. That would be helpful.

- I only drink out of plastic Mardi Gras cups at home. When we make it down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras I could care less about catching beads, it's all about the cups. I may or may not have knocked small children over for plastic Mardi Gras cups.



- But I will drink out of a glass when I drink wine. Not a wine glass though, a regular drinking glass. Not sure why, but it might have something to do with my clumsiness.

- I can burp the entire alphabet and even burp words on command. Special right?

- My favorite book is Pride and Prejudice. I own the A&E movie version which is like 6 hrs long. I've watched it a few times.(Woo young hot Colin Firth!)

- I would really love to go sky diving one day. Would anyone like to join me?

- The furthest I've ever been from home is when I went on a trip to London in College.

- I've lived in 3 different states- Louisiana, Texas, and California. I loved living in California and love living in Texas currently, but will always think of Louisiana as home.


I hope I didn't bore you to death or scare anyone off with my little tidbits of information. Welcome! to anyone who is new around here, thanks for reading. And to those of you who have been around a while thanks for sticking with me!