Valentine Porch

I LOVE Valentine's Day!  It may be because red is my favorite color.  It may be because it adds color and fun to a typically, dreary month of the year around here.  It may be because after taking down all of the Christmas decorations, the house looks so sad and bare.  It may be because I LOVE chocolate and this gives me an excuse to indulge.  Whatever the reason, my Valentine decorations go up immediately after the Christmas ones come down so I've had these up since around January 2.  I started with my outdoor decorations since I was excited to continue using my grapevine and lights from my fall porch.

 Now when doing this post, I realized (sadly) that I didn't take pictures of my Christmas porch (how on earth did that happen??).  But it was really pretty -- take my word for it!  For Valentine's Day, I decided to keep up the white lights and just add in a few strings of red and pink, along with some red netting that I got in the Christmas clearance aisle.  (I always look for lights and red decorations in Christmas clearance to add to my Valentine stash!).

 I got this cute wooden "XOXO" banner in the dollar spot at Target (does anyone else have a hard time avoiding that space???).  Of course this was in the "$3.00" dollar spot but a deal nonetheless I think.

 I kept out the fence board section that I used in the fall (and Christmas -- which remember I didn't take any pictures of) and added this bling-y heart from Dollar Tree.  The metal, heart-shaped lights were also from the Target Dollar Spot (the $3.00 spot).  Now these surprised me -- the batteries last a really long time in these!  In fact, we went away for a few days and I forgot to turn them off -- they were still lit!

 I love being able to carry over decorations and modify them for different holidays so the porch will probably take on different colors, lights and decorations for Easter!

 Happy Valentine's Day!

CanvasPop Love

 A long time ago I was approached by CanvasPop to receive a free canvas print in return for a review/post of their product and services.  I finally got around to selecting the photo I wanted and now to posting my review.  First of all, I can't say enough great things about this company from customer service to quality and communication!  I have no experience with any other online canvas print companies but honestly, I would not even go anywhere else -- I'm just that pleased!

The process was SUPER simple:  I chose the photo, walked through my options on their website (which is really user-friendly) and ordered the canvas.  I received an email confirmation immediately and the next day received a proof of my canvas for approval.  That's it -- just a week or so later it arrived, ready to hang if I chose to simply hang the canvas as is.  On the back are nice, protectors on each corner to protect the wall.

 One word of advice, if you DO want to frame your canvas, be prepared to pay a LOT for custom framing (around 90.00 for this 16X20 size picture).  You can order it framed from CanvasPop though and while you will pay extra of course, if you are not interested in fiddling with other frames, I'd suggest paying them to frame it.  The issue is that the canvas is thick -- so it sticks out of a standard frame.  MY solution, I used a frame I had in the 'donate' pile, painted and distressed it and added a rustic braid to the edge that stands out from the frame which you can see below.

To me, it was worth saving 90.00! 

Now here's the REALLY fun part . . . this was a gift for my husband for Christmas which I arrived at from seeing the picture below in a gift shop on St. Simons Island, GA where we vacation every year.  We saw the picture, fell in love with it and then looked at the 200.00 price tag and said, "forget it!"
So, unbeknownst to my hubby, I began snapping pictures of seagulls on the Island . . . LOTS of pictures of seagulls.  After we got home, I found the one I thought most looked like the one in the store and used that one for my canvas print.

 Now the best part came on Christmas morning when my hubby opened his gift.  He went from joy, to shock, to this face that said, "Oh no -- you didn't REALLY spend that much on this gift for me did you???".  So before he could have a second heart attack, I told him "No" -- that I had taken the photo, got the canvas for free, the frame I had so instead of 200.00 it cost 2.00 (that was for the braid on the edge).

We talked about where to hang it and he said that when he originally saw it in the store, he thought it would look perfect over the bed in the 'beachy' guest room.  So that's where it hangs . . . okay, so maybe this was one of those gifts that we are BOTH enjoying ;)