Pillow Talk P2

After my Pillow Talk post from last week I inspired myself to keep the momentum of replacing ugly pillows around my house going.  Ugly pillows can come from anywhere but my biggest offense has been using the ones that come along with my couch from the vendor.  After convincing hubby to purchase a new couch the last thing I can do is to throw in comments about pillow updates.  Now onto the pillows, yes I know I almost lost you...

Welcome to our bonus room.  Our bonus room is up on our second story of our home and is a giant cave.  Giant in a good way though as we moved from a dollhouse so any extra space to store our junk is appreciated. 

The room is filled with furniture from our last family room before the move so it always feels a little like going back in time when we hang out upstairs. 

Ok back to the earth shattering pillow talk. 

Check out my sexy friends on the couches above.  They have served us well, giving us seven years of love but it was time for a little face lift. 

In come by old staple Land's End.  Again they were having a pillow blowout w/free shipping so little old me took and peek and found these beauties.

20" x 20" Rivet Edge Decorative Pillow Cover

They are 100% cotton canvas so they will be durable and washable for future years. Currently they are on clearance for $14.99 which makes this easy makeover much more fun.  I was even able to buy the last  Lattice Applique decorative pillow cover Land's End had in stock, score!

What do you think of my little bonus room face lift? 

Since hubby doesn't go into this room very often I am not even sure he has seen it yet :)

Ziggy Arrived

Finally after years of waiting to order my Zebra rug, it arrived at our home over the weekend.  After debating in my head all of many places my new striped friend could land I decided on our reading nook in our home office.

~ before ~

no rug, what a sad little corner

~ after ~

shaaaazam!!!!

I am in love!  Hubby even let out a couple of "wows" and "I love it" so when he named the rug Ziggy in an excited outburst I happily accepted. 

What do you all think of my new striped friend?

Wild Side

I did it... I finally did it!  After searching and scrubbing the Internet for the last two years I bought my first zebra rug for our home.  Hubby is still a little sceptical about adding another fake animal to our casa but I know he will come around in the end.

With so many choices it was hard to decide on which style would be just right for our home office.

Cowhide leather is by far my favorite but broke the bank so I kept searching the web.

Polyproplene... what is Polyproplene?  Sounded scary and some of these rugs looked like they came out of a plastic tube so I again kept searching the web.

Then the stars aligned...

I found the perfect Zebra for me!

Hand-tufted Alexa Animal Shape Zebra Wool Rug (4' x 6')

Check out his cute tail... love him even more!

ohh ahhh... no drooling ladies as he is mine all mine

I first found my new friend at RugsUSA for a pretty fair price but I knew I could do better so I cast my web out into internet land and located every possible online store in the universe who sold him too.  Overstock was sold out but had a better online price than RugsUSA so I just kept checking the site everyday.  Then today not only was Zebra back in stock with just 1 at Overstock I also had a 10% off coupon.. SCORE!

I feel like $104 shipped for my new Zebra friend is fantastic deal. When he arrives I'll posts pictures of all his glory.

Now the important question.. what should I name him?

The Cookery

If I haven't mentioned it before the hubby and I have been reaching out from our cooking comfort zone for the last few years to make new and interesting things for dinner.  For example we have welcomed a dutch oven into our lives and hubby even makes bread from scratch, all things we never would have dreamed to attempt just a few short years ago. 

I first learned about the Durham Cookery about a year ago from a local foodie Durham blog.  The Cookery is a local business with two distinct aspects: a state of the art commercial food production facility and they also have a food-business incubation program.  They can help find you the perfect local cater, teach cooking classes from local restaurant chefs or you can rent the production facility by the hour which is perfect if you operate a food truck.  For Christmas I purchased hubby "Sausage Making: The Basics of Grinding, Casing and Cooking Culinary" workshop.   Have we ever made a sausage, no. Do we like sausages, yes... so this class seemed like a winner.

All hubby and I could think of was that the class was going to resemble the scene below from Seinfeld.

We had such a blast! We learned to make fresh chorizo, hot Italian sausage and a country breakfast sausage.  Here is pic of hubby learning to use the Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment after we mixed in all the spices.

~ insert joke here ~

We then learned how to set up a Kitchen Aid attachment to feed our ground pork into the casings.  Lucky me got to set the machine up for this part of the process.  I was a little grossed out threading intestine onto the plastic pipe for stuffing but quickly remembered how delicious these little devils were going to taste and got over it. Chef Nathan then cooked up our hard work and OMG I can't not even describe how delicious everything tasted.

sausage even tastes better with your hair in it too

This class was amazing!  We would have never attempted to make homemade sausage but now have first hand seem how easy it really can be with the right kitchen tools.  I have a feeling that a few items for our Kitchen Aid mixer might end up in the Amazon cart today.  Any local Durham readers out in blog land, I definitely recommend to check out some upcoming classes at The Cookey as it made a great gift for hubby.

Pillow Talk

Last year I was lucky enough to not only convince my hubby that we needed to upgrade our home he also agreed to upgrade some furniture.. crazy talk I know.  Below is a picture of one of our new additions in our living room.  Try not to drool over the nail head trim :)  We don't have children yet so I felt like we had a few more years of pretty living room furniture left in us.  No joke when I was a little girl I would pour my milk under the couch cushions because I didn't want to drink it so there is no telling what little devils we might have to let live in our home.

While I love my couch I wasn't always so satisfied with the dark pillow covers that it came with. 

Dark rug, dark pillows .. ehhh ... we can do better.

Over the holidays I received an email from my old standby Land's End.  They were letting me know that everything on the website was an additional 40% off with free shipping.. this caught my attention.

As I cruised the site for down vests and warm winter sweaters I ended up in the home section and found these beauties.

20" x 20" Lattice Applique Decorative Pillow Covers

Original $ 44.50 NOW $ 9.99

w/my coupon $6.99!!!!!!

In just a few short days the UPS fairy arrived at my home.  I quickly switched out the pillow

covers from old to new so hubby wouldn't have time to see what was going on before the big reveal.

Ta da!

Love the little face lift in our living room and hubby loves that it only cost us $24.96.