Ramsign Giveaway

Much like jewelry on a beautiful woman, the right accessory on a house can really pull an entire look or design together. Details matter!

Ramsign, a small Danish company that has been producing porcelain enamel house signs for years has generously offered to give a house number plaque to a lucky reader here on ArchitectDesign.

The winner will be selected on Wednesday, June 8th in celebration of my birthday! To enter, simply leave a comment saying which house number you would pick if you won. Receive 1 extra entry for posting a link to the giveaway on twitter or facebook. Good luck!

p.s.This giveaway is international, so don't hesitate to enter!

Top 10 things homeowners wish they’d included in their home and Giveaway Winner Announced!

By:  RE/MAX Complete

On May 07, 2011 in the Deseret News, we came across an article called the Top 10 things homeowners wish they'd included in their homes, which was contributed by Henry Walker Homes.
We couldn’t located the actual article online, so we thought we would share the article with you today as it has some great things to consider if you have decided to build your own home!

Moving into a new home is a gratifying experience, especially for new homeowners.  However, there are several things to consider before and during construction to avoid going through the inconvenience of remodeling later; wishing you would have done things right the first time.  Most of these are expenses that people shy away from, thinking it will be better to save the money, but industry experts at Henry Walker Homes have some wisdom to share to save money, time and headaches:

1. STUDY THE FLOOR PLAN
2. LANDSCAPED YARD
3. SECURE FENCING
4. FINISH THE BASEMENT
5. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FOR A KITCHEN
6. RENOVATE THE BATHROOM
7. FLOORING SELECTION
8. PAINTING VERSUS WALLPAPER
9. SOLID LIGHTING
10. INSTALLING DRIVEWAY HEATING SYSTEMS

This article is going to be a 10 part series where we will go deeper into each of these steps.   We hope you come back tomorrow as we discuss “STUDY THE FLOOR PLAN”.

GIVEAWAY ANNOUNCEMENT:


We have a winner of our first giveaway today of the vinyl tiled plaque!    Our winner was selected by Random.org

We are so excited to announce that comment #2  is:

Alta said...

Love it!!

Congratulations!   We will be in contact with you so we can get your item to you!
 
Thanks to all of you who entered!
 
Have a great week everyone, we hope to see you back tomorrow!

GIVEAWAY - Come see what you could win!

By: RE/MAX Complete

So are you excited for today?

Google Images

It's GIVEAWAY day!

Since we have almost been blogging a month now, we thought what better way to show our appreciation than an awesome giveaway!

So are you ready to see what we will be giving away this week?

Do I have your undivided attention yet?

Isn't this just totally awesome?

We love making dreams come true through home ownership!  
And this saying just hit the right spot!

HOME:  Where life begins and love never Ends!

This great giveaway, is for a 12 x 12 inch tile as you see above.   It also comes with the stand to hold the tile so you can proudly display it in your home!

So who wants to win this great giveaway?   You do, RIGHT?

Here is what you need to do!

This is Mandatory to win:

Over on the right side of our blog in the sidebar you will see the heading called Followers.   You need to be a follower of our blog to win!   So go and sign up to be one of our followers, its easy.  

Once you have done that.. you need to leave a comment on this post indicating that you are a follower.  

(Make sure you follow us publicly and not privately or we will have no way to contact you if you should win.

For extra entries to win you can do all or any of the following,
make sure you leave us an extra comment for each one you did:

• Go and like our Facebook page HERE 
• Blog or Facebook about our giveaway
• Twitter about our giveaway
• Go and read our blog and tell us which post you loved best

So if you do everything you could have 6 chances to win!

Our winner will be announced next Monday, May 16th by Random.org





GOOD LUCK!

The season of second chances

Recently, I was asked to review a copy of The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier which just came out in paperback. I wasn't really sure what to expect but the premise from her PR group really sounded up my alley. A middle aged college professor decides to take a chance by moving to a small town from NYC to begin a new chapter in her career and renovating an old Victorian house. I figured if I didn't like the book, I wouldn't be out on much, right?

After a slightly bumpy start (mostly because I don't read much fiction) I quickly became engrossed and found Meier and I spoke the same language. Within the first dozen pages, a haircut was described as a Maxfield Parrish mural, a hotel was compared to the namesake in the Astaire/Crosby movie "Holiday Inn" and when house shopping in a small town as opposed to a rural area she wrote,

"Lets go there - now! My heart ran ahead. Let's leave the arena of wild bear and rabid raccoon and crazy men with axes, for the safety and comfort of a neighborhood, for the aroma of blueberry pies cooling on the kitchen windowsills, for little front yards and the idea of biking to work. The concept of biking to work should have given me the hint that I was getting carried away. And why was it priced so far below all that we'd seen, and what did she mean by "white elephant"? "

From this passage on, I was hooked. Don't ask me why it took me 9 pages-did I hear a bit of myself in her voice? I would recommend this book to anyone and to pass along the pleasure, I'm giving away my copy of the book (free to me, free to you). Please live in the United States and leave a comment by Sunday, May 8th (Mothers day!). I will notify the winner and send it off immediately so you can hopefully enjoy it as much as I did. Good luck!

and the winner is...

I love random.org for making the decision easy for me because if it were up to me I'd do one for everyone!  I'm looking forward to getting to know Tiffany and hopefully create a little something for her that she'll enjoy.  I've been over at her site reading this story, so fun.

If you are interested in a consultation, please visit my services page for further details.

imagine this: artistically modern LA living

I found Kimbirdy {or should I say she found me?} when I posted my {imagined} house entry where I took a picture of my red brick gem of a rental and transformed it into my dream version of what it would look like if I could have it my way.

She left a sweet comment saying "and when you are done, can you come make me one just like it? i love bungalows and desperately want one of my own someday... someday when i can afford it that is. oh california and your ridiculous real estate prices."

 {art source}{images of Kim from her site}
It got me thinking.  Wouldn't it be fun to have her send me a picture of her place and see what I could come up with?  So I did.  And she has been sweet enough to play along.

As I've played around with her place I've been reading her great blog and quickly realized this girl is as sweet as they come.  She writes about her life in California in a way that brings a smile to my face every time I visit her site, Fill Your Well. 

See her cool blue house above?  She told me that she loves the courtyard and wishes her place was a bit bigger so she could have an art studio.  Understand that this is just a conceptual rendering, to know if anything like this were possible there would be a lot more involvement.  This is just for fun. 

In real life, her man is building her a studio in the yard, but in my imagined reality she has her roof top studio with room left over for a patio to enjoy that great LA weather.  Glass panels suspended under the handrails would allow for a clear view of the tree tops around her place.

A few other things:  Extending part of the front of her house to create space for bay window {another wish of hers}within an architectural feature with wooden vertical lines would take the eye upwards and blend the new addition with the cool blue stucco.  Then taking the existing bathroom window and making it much bigger and taking it to the ceiling with similarly shaped windows in the art studio above would let in loads of diffused natural light. Putting a cantilevered roof on top would shade the outdoor space and would allow for lots of recessed lighting for night time fun.  {I also pretend that there are solar panels on top capturing light to help with energy costs so Kimbirdy and her mister can travel more.}

I would accessorize the outdoor spaces with fun colors and bold patterns to take some of the edge off of the modern lines to blend that polished look into something very  livable and very inviting.

GIVEAWAY

I had so much fun playing with Kim's house, I'd love to do another one.  Just leave me a comment that lets me know why you think your home should be featured on my 'imagine this' series.  {and be sure to become a follower}

Contest ends tonight at midnight.

{accessories from zgallerie}

Alice Lane Giveaway

Hop on over to the Alice Lane blog and enter to win this fantastic pillow. 

{and since I told you about it, if you win you can thank me by letting me borrow it because I have just the place for it...}

GIVEAWAY! Fall Flags

 For someone who hates to procrastinate, I'm feeling pretty bad that it has taken me this long to show you my AWESOME pillow I won this summer on 6th Street Design School. 

When I got the exciting email from Kirsten I immediately went back to the Be Still site to make sure I picked the right pillow.  

Oh the fantastic choices! 

Sarah is so talented and picks great fabrics for her pillows.

 I decided to stick with my original choice and I'm glad I did.  I wanted to go crazy with color and pick one of my other favorites {shown above}, but I knew the zebra would be my kind of classic.

 Finding the right spot for it hasn't been as easy as I thought.  I knew I wanted it for my bench and I have the perfect pillows in mind to go with it but that project just hasn't happened yet.

In the mean time I'm sticking with neutrals and living it up for fall.

to continue the fun of a giveaway - I'm giving away the FALL flags hanging in the first photo of this post.

Become a follower, leave a comment with your contact info, and

I'll let you know who wins soon.

Madame X Giveaway

Everyone knows of the elegant portrait 'Madame X' by John Singer Sargent from 1884. However, does everyone know the backstory of its' fascinating American subject, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau?

In 2004, Gioia Diliberto wrote a fantastic book in the historical fiction genre, 'I am Madame X' which took the facts of this fascinating woman and wove a story of what her life may have been like. I'm dusting off the bookshelves and giving away my copy to a reader. On Monday, October 18th I will make the decision and mail it off!

Virginie Gautreau was notorious in her day for her many love affairs as well as her sense of fashion (maybe the Paris Hilton of her time?). She was sought out by many of the most famous artists of the day to paint her portrait, including Sargent, in order to bask in some of her notoriety. Sargent actually painted 2 portraits of her; the famous one which caused the scandal in the black gown and one in a chaste white gown shown above, as well as numerous sketches which still survive.

Gautreau never survived the scandal over the famous portrait and mostly retreated from society, dying in 1915. Sargent sold the portrait shortly after her death in 1916 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, calling it the "the best thing I have ever done ".She was painted a few times after the Sargent portrait, most famously by Gustave Courtois in 1891, which sharply references Madame X but in virginal white, seen above.One last portrait, showing her famous profile, by Antonio De La Gandara in 1898 probably captured her essence even better than Sargent. It was Gautreau's favorite and mine as well and I'll end the topic with it.

Simply leave a comment for your chances to win a copy of the book with a way to get your address should random.org choose you. Please, US residents only. Good Luck!

The winner is lucky #13 - David Toms! I will be in touch with you shortly, Savoir Faire!

Diana Vreeland giveaway!

Recently, JCB and I shared a lovely afternoon in Baltimore with the fabulous Meg of Pigtown Design. One of her favorite haunts, which she mentions often for her many scores, is the Bookthing. I was able to snag a 1st edition copy of DV, Diana Vreeland's autobiography to replace the recent reprint I've had in my personal library. As one of the most fascinating and influential women of the 20th century, this book is a MUST read! I would love to share my copy with a reader. Simply leave a comment if you are interested by Wednesday (Sept 23) and a recipient will be chosen randomly. Good luck!
Giveaway to US addresses only, thanks!

Zing Me!

I had no idea doing a giveaway could be so fun.  If I could, I would do one every day.

Thanks to random.org I didn't have to pick the winner, that would have been much too difficult with all the creativity going on! {if you didn't go back and read the comments after posting, you should, RC1 let loose his mad rhyming skills.}

The winner is:  FRYBABY!

Consolation prize: If you can tell me what you movie this comes from you get the super prize of satisfaction of knowing a great movie. {no fair googling}

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could pass all my zingers to you?"

photo from a recipe on  lickthebowlgood, a super fun foodie blog with a great recipe for key lime squares.

GIVEAWAY! Zester

I've been making a real effort to cook more.  As a result, I'm finding I lack the gadgets to pull off some of the recipes I'd like to try.

I need a zester.

Do you?

I'll give you one.

To qualify, sign up to follow designsparrow and leave a comment telling me how you would use your new Zester. {You can pick the color handle: red, yellow, pink or black}

Double your chance to win by blogging about this giveaway by leaving me a link to your site.

I will announce a winner Tuesday, July 21st.

Martha Stewart Lighting Giveaway!

This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to 'Matthew'. You should receive your prize shortly! Thanks CSN!

Thanks to my friends at CSNlighting, I'm able to have a really great giveaway contest! I have chosen 3 different lamps from the Martha Stewart Lighting line that I really liked. To enter, just tell me which one you like the best; 1, 2 or 3! The winner will be chosen using random.org and notifed at the email address they provide. This drawing will close next Friday, May 15th at noon. Selection #1 is the Conservatory Adjustable Table Lamp in Polished Nickel. I LOVE anything nickel.
Selection #2 is the same lamp in the bronze finish. This would work better in a room with darker colors and tones than the nickel one.

Selection #3 is the Silvered Glass Table lamp. Need I say more? So pretty, even the finial is pretty!

Introducing Martha Stewart Lighting

Martha Stewart is arguably one of the most recognized names in cooking, home decor and gardening today. Among her successes; an Emmy Award-winning TV series, a slew of award-winning magazines, Martha Stewart Living Radio, countless best-selling books and of course a collection of home goods. Whatever your opinions on the celebrity; her success is really something to be admired.

Stylish and affordable are two words that perfectly describe Martha Stewart's collection of home goods and accessories. Offering everything from bedroom and bathroom linens to cookware and home lighting, Martha Stewart is focused on bringing her creativity and sense of style to the consumer.

A thoughtfully crafted line of traditional and contemporary table lamps, floor lamps, sconces and torchieres, every piece of Martha Stewart Lighting uses high quality materials with designs inspired by some of Martha's favorite lighting. From beautiful silvered & Venetian glass, crystal and colorful ceramic glazes to striking bronze and brass finishes - you're sure to find a piece that works in your home.

Simply leave a comment stating which lamp you would like to win! All entries must be by people in the US or Canada, sorry -and I can't enter either -DRATS! Make sure I have a way to contact you in your comment. Good luck, may the best reader win!

Giveaway!

This giveaway is now closed: The winner was Little Augury!
I have to apologize for not being a regular blogger as of late, to make it up, I decided to host a small giveaway! I had been eyeing these little porcelain houses at Anthropologie for some time so when they were finally 75% off, I bought not just one but two! They actually are 2 pieces and hold some incense (included). When the incense is lit - the 2 chimney's smoke! THE CUTEST THING EVER. I have to admit I don't like the scent of incense at all, but I love the cute houses. I think you can see the smoke in the attached photos.To enter: leave a comment and a way of contacting you should you win this randomly chosen contest (blogger ID or email). A winner will be chosen Wednesday, May 6th and I'll get it off to you in the mail along with some other small 'goodies'. May the best blogger (or reader) win!

Happy Birthday, Ronda!

I wanted to wish Ronda at All the Best a HAPPY BIRTHDAY and also to thank her for her wonderful giveaways she's been hosting. I recently won a copy of the book Mr & Mrs Smith Global Shortlist and can't wait to get it!