Review and Giveaway with Bright Settings

Looking to spruce up your table or change your kitchen look for fall?  Look no further than Bright Settings linen company!

Bright Settings was founded in 1999 in Pennsylvania by Marc Templin.  What started out in one small room has grown into a thriving company.  Bright settings has everything you need from tablecloths to napkins, chair covers to placemats, all to help you pull together a beautiful dining look.  Their design and color selection for their linens is astonishing!

 

For my review of Bright Settings, I was sent ten cloth napkins in a black toile (my favorite!).  The pattern is gorgeous, and the napkins are extremely beautiful.

The quality of these napkins in wonderful, and they are very large and usable as well.  They add so much elegance to my table.  And I love that they are machine washable!

Bright Settings has agreed to give one Till Death Do Us Part reader her (or his!) own set of ten black toile cloth napkins.  Ready to win?

TO ENTER:
(Please leave a separate comment for each entry.)

Mandatory Entries:
1. Be (or become) a follower of Till Death Do Us Part via GFC.

2. Visit Bright Settings and tell me something else you love.

Extra Entries:

3. Like the Bright Settings Facebook page.

4. Follow Bright Settings on Twitter.

5. Follow Till Death Do Us Part on Twitter.

6. Sign up for the Bright Settings newsletter.

7. Post this giveaway to your blog or sidebar (please leave a link in your comment).

8. Facebook or tweet about this giveaway (please leave a link in your comment).

Eight ways to win!
Open to U.S. residents only.  Giveaway will close on Sunday, October 9` at 10 p.m. CST. Winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced here asap!

Glass Dharma and Prefense Giveaway Winners!

Many thanks to everyone who entered the giveaways at Till Death Do Us Part.  The winner of the Glass Dharma giveaway, chosen via Random.org, is Debra!  The winner of the Prefense hand sanitizer is Patricia!

Thanks so much to all who entered, and stay tuned for more giveaways today!

DIY Black Toile Curtain Trim

Part of the beauty of DIY is saving money and getting to create exactly the look you want without searching through stores.

As I continue my trend of black and white for this year's fall season,  I turned to our den curtains, which were pale blue, yellow, and gold.  I had some solid white panels that were semi-sheer and a bit blah.  Determined to use them, I decided to dress them up a bit in the spirit of Black and White Fall by adding a trim of black and white toile (my favorite!).

With my sewing machine still in Georgia, I resorted to Stitch Witchery for this project.

I used a piece of cardboard (that I apparently doodled on at some point) to make a nice sharp seam, and I created some trim for the bottom of the curtains.

I used more stitch witchery to then attach the trim to the bottom of the white panels.

It took awhile to do all that ironing (which just so happens to be my most hated chore), but it's a simple process.

The trim also gives the ultra-lightweight sheers more weight so that they hang more beautifully.

Light and crisp, like I hope fall will be!

Review and Giveaway with Prefense Foaming Hand Sanitizer!

Sponsored by Tomoson.com



I am a bit of a germaphobe. I am always that girl passing around the hand sanitizer at the table.  There are, however, some things I have wished I could change about hand sanitizers: having to apply them constantly throughout the day, the overwhelming alcohol odor they have, and how terribly they dry out my hands!

Prefense foaming hand sanitizer solves all three  of these problems!  It's alcohol-free, made entirely from all-natural ingredients.  It actually softens your hands instead of drying them! And one application lasts all day!

Here are a few other perks that make Prefense the superior hand sanitizer on the market:

-It protects against staph, E.coli, strep, and more.
-Because "one spray lasts all day," you save money on hand sanitizer!
-It's non-toxic.

For this review, I was sent Prefense's 1.5 oz. foaming hand sanitizer:

This bottle contains 120 sprays...that's four months-worth of product in one small bottle!  I was totally thrilled when I tried this product to discover that it actually does make your hands smoother, and it truly is odorless!  It's definitely going to become my go-to sanitizer, especially before meals!  (No more alcohol scent getting in the way of my food!)

Prefense has generously offered to give away an 8 oz. bottle of foaming hand sanitizer to one lucky winner!  That's 640 applications--or nearly two years-worth of product!

Here's how to win!

TO ENTER:

(Please leave a separate comment for each entry.  You may complete whichever of these entries you choose, whether it be one of them or all of them!)

1.  Leave a comment.  Just any old comment will do!

2.  Follow Prefense on Twitter.

3.  Like Prefense on Facebook!

4.  Promote this giveaway on your blog, facebook, or twitter.

5.  Follow Till Death Do Us Part via GFC.

6.  Follow Till Death Do Us Part on Twitter.

Want your Prefense now?  You can purchase their affordable products here at their website. 

This contest will close on September 25 at 10 p.m. CST.  Open to U.S. residents only.  Winner will be chosen via Random.org and receive their product directly from Prefense.

Good luck!

 


I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Review and Giveaway with Glass Dharma Glass Straws!

Everyone has reusable glass plates, bowls, cups, and silverware.  So why not reusable glass straws?

Meet GlassDharma glass straws, the creation of David Leonhardt.  David is a lampworker and glassblower out of California who wanted to take a practical step at reducing waste by reducing the number of plastic straws consumed and tossed in the garbage.

 

Here are just a few of the benefits of using glass straws:

• No toxins seep into your beverage as you drink.
• Each glass straw usage equals one plastic straw kept out of your garbage and out of a landfill.
• You can save money by using your glass straw instead of purchasing thousands of plastic ones through the years.

GlassDharma, however, doesn't just make any old glass straw.  GlassDharma straws are:

• Made of borosilicate tubing and is the strongest glass commercially available.
  Means that we have spared no expense in bringing you the strongest, most durable drinking straw possible.
• Created with the best glass-blowing techniuqes.
• Hand-made in the U.S.A.
  

And for your convenience, they are microwave and dishwasher safe!

There are tons of styles, sizes, lengths, and colors to choose from.  For this review, I received an ice tea bent beauty, a simple elegance smoothie, an ice tea decorative dots in amber, and a sipper shorty.  These straws are excellent and exceeded my expectations.  Not only are they quite elegant (unlike plastic straws), but they are sturdy and practical.  I especially love the decorative dots straws and the bent beauty, which is so easy to use!  My concerns with glass straws--would it break against my glass during use? Is it easy to clean?--were definitely put to rest.  The straw didn't clink against my glass at all.  Also, GlassDharma straws are dishwasher safe, and there are special cleaning brushes available for hand-washing.  My husband (who doesn't usually care about this kind of thing) was even impressed with these straws, and we will definitely be buying Christmas presents this year from GlassDharma.  They also offer a lifetime guarantee--if they can't repair your straw, they'll replace it for free!

GlassDharma has offered to give one Till Death Do Us Part reader a $25 gift credit to be used on their website!

Ready to win?

 

TO ENTER:
(Please leave a separate comment for each entry.)

Mandatory Entries:
1. Be (or become) a follower of Till Death Do Us Part via GFC.

2. Visit Glass Dharma and tell me what you'd get with your $25 credit.

Extra Entries:

3. Like the Glass Dharma Facebook page.

4. Follow Glass Dharma on Twitter.

5. Follow Till Death Do Us Part on Twitter.

6. Post this giveaway to your blog or sidebar (please leave a link in your comment).

7. Facebook or tweet about this giveaway (please leave a link in your comment).

Giveaway will close on Sunday, September 25 at 10 p.m. CST.  Winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced here asap!

Good luck!




(*Author was supplied with free product to review.  All opinions and statements, however, are solely that of the author.)

Let's Keep Our Dogs Healthy!

This post brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. All opinions are 100% mine.

To say we love our dog Coy would be an understatement.  He came into our lives totally unexpectedly, and he was spared the fate of a shelter dog. 

 

Being a lab mix, and still being a puppy in lab years (he's 1!), we do our best to keep Coy active. He has boundless energy!  We have a small house and back yard, so that means frequent walks and visits to a friend's pasture and pond.

I was excited when I learned about Hill's Healthy Mobility Challenge.  Hill's food can increase your dog's mobility drastically in just 30 days.  This company realizes how important mobility is to a dog's health and happiness.  You should read up on Hill's Pet Nutrition if you're concerned about your dog's mobility and want to keep him/her active!

As owners of a larger dog, we're especially concerned for Coy's mobility, as labs and other similar dogs tend to experience hip and other joint pain as they age.  Such problems severely limit mobility and can lead to weight and health problems.  Hill's food addresses these possibilities by specifically including ingredients in their food that increase joint health.

Worried about affording a premium pet food?  You can download a Hill's Healthy Mobility Coupon to get you started.  Register to receive $30 in coupon offers and automatically be entered to win Hill's sweepstakes.  They're giving away FREE PET FOOD for a year to 30 people!  That's a lot of mobility!

Are you a Facebooker?  So is Hill's!  You can learn more about the Healthy Mobility challenge by checking out Hill's Pet Nutrition on Facebook.

Let's keep our dogs healthy!  They do the same for us. :)

Two Giveaway Winners!

Two giveaways ended tonight.  Chosen by Random.org, the winners are...

Grammy Goodwill for the Trudeau kitchen gadgets giveaway, and Ashley for the Natural Scents soy candle giveaway. 

Congrats!

Thanks to all those who entered, and please check back tomorrow to enter the next great giveaway!

Save Money with Straight Talk

This post brought to you by Straight Talk. All opinions are 100% mine.

My husband and I are cutting corners any way we can (that house down payment doesn't save for itself!).  This has caused us to examine all of our bill statements.  One that particularly frustrates me is my cell phone bill.  Sometimes I ask myself, why am I paying $70 a month in a binding cell phone contract?  I feel like some of that could be going towards our house if I switched to Straight Talk, a service provider that offers no-contract plans but still guarantees nationwide coverage and great reception.  They offer reputable phone brands like like LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Nokia, Samsung.  And with Straight Talk, there's NO contract!  So that means no early termination fees.  There's also no credit check and no surprise bills and fees (which I HATE).

Just consider the "All You Need" plan.  1000 minutes of talk, 1000 texts, and 3 MB of data per month.  That's a lot for only $45 per month!   If you like the sound of that plan, you can get it for an entire year for just $499!   And this includes calling, texting, pictures messaging, and web access.  All of that, plus free 411, and no activation, reactivation, or termination fees. 

Everything you need

Straight Talk also offers long distance plans at low rates.  You can make long-distance calls from your home, office, or cell with a flexible prepaid service.  Call a friend

One drawback to other prepaid services is lack of phone selection.  Not so with Straight Talk!  Reconditioned phones are available for as low as $10, and they come with features such as camera, mp3 player, mobile web access, and BlueTooth capability.  What a great option for children and young teens!  You can also choose from smart phones that have touch screens, cameras, video recorders, music players, instant messaging, and BlueTooth.  Straight Talk even makes the Android phone affordable!  Android on Straight Talk

It's also the favorite of the Fantasy Fly Fishing team!  Hook, line and sinker

For more information, take a look at this video: 

Homestead Sign

Do you think of your house as not just a building to live in, but more of a homestead?   For us, it's a place to live, rest, play, garden, build, worship, work, entertain, and pray.  A place to call our own.

A homestead.

So as I pondered what to put on my latest sign as I decorate for Black and White Fall, I decided that "Homestead" was the perfect word.

I have used stencils and graphite-transfer techniques to make signs in the past, but for this project, I used a glue-transfer technique (Becca was also the inspiration for this sign.  So pefect for my black and white theme.)



This technique definitely works, but you have to be thorough, gentle, and patient (three things that I'm prone to not be!).  You must follow the instructions to the letter (yep, not me again...).  But I did manage to get this to work, and here's how:

1.  Sand away the rough edges of your board, and wipe clean.

2.  Paint your board black and then white.  I used two coats of white, which allowed a little of the black to show through here and there and give the board an antiqued look.

(I do all my painting on my den floor.  With three pets swarming around me.  I'm a risk taker.

3.  Sand the areas of the board where you want the black paint to show through.   (Note: this is somewhat difficult/time-consuming to do by hand.  Alas, I have no electric sander, but it is definitely possible by hand.  You just have to keep at it.)

4.  Paint printer paper with Elmer's Washable Glue.  Make sure you cover the entire area where the image will be printed.  Let dry completely.  When the pages were dry, I stacked them between some heavy books to straighten them out a little and ensure they'd feed smoothly through the printer.

5.  Print out your image on the glue side of the paper.  You need a laser-jet image for this project.  Also, be sure to print a mirror image of your graphic if you are using words.  In Paint.net, you select image, and then flip horizontal/vertical.

6.  Position your graphics on your board to decide where they should be placed.    (The beautiful wheat pictures came from The Graphics Fairy.)

 (Check out the monster mistake I almost made....pretty sure "homstead" is not a word....)

7.  Paint Mod-Podge onto the areas where your graphics will go.  Place them ink and glue-side down, press the graphic onto the board, and smooth out all the bubbles.

 8.  Let the graphics dry to the board overnight.  Removing them too early will result in improper transfer of the ink.  Mine dried a little over eight hours.  I used a wet rag to moisten the graphics and rub the wet paper away, revealing the graphic transferred onto the wood.

9.  I then painted the whole piece with Mod Podge to disguise the areas around the graphics where it had been used to tranfer the image.

That's it!

More than just a home.

Review and Giveaway with Trudeau Kitchen Products

Trudeau gets it.

Cooking can be stressful.  Not necessarily because of following recipes or cleaning up messes or worrying about your family's reaction to a new side dish.  Sometimes, we just don't have the right tools to make cooking easy.  Case in point, last week, a malfunctioning can opener added ten valuable minutes to my prep time and subtracted a little piece of my sanity.

Meet Trudeau's Stress Less line of cooking tools.

"Trudeau reinvents the joy of cooking with the new Stress Less line of kitchenware designed to reduce stress while you prepare your favorite meals. You can now get the most out of your kitchen tools with the least effort."  (Trudeau homepage)

Pictured below are the Stress Less pepper mill and garlic press, two items in this line.

For this review, I received the Stress Less can opener, rotary cheese grater, and pizza cutter.  My first reaction to the products were that they appeared to be of great quality.  It proved to be true! 

The can opener was great timing! (See can opener story at the beginning of this post.)

The pizza cutter will be used more than I like to admit.  It's huge compared to our other cutter and much more substantial with a better blade.  (And we're no longer advertising for an insurance company every time we cut pizza.)

We love cheese 'round these parts.  But we hate grating cheese 'round these parts.  Or at least I do (my husband doesn't do any grating, of course!).  The rotary grater makes it so much easier and much faster, and it eliminates accidentally grating your fingers (been there, done that).

I'm definitely stressing less already!   You can Stress Less to by entering to win your own can opener, rotary cheese grater, and pizza cutter from Trudeau.  Here's how:

TO ENTER:

(Please leave a separate comment for each entry.)

Mandatory Entries:

1.  Be (or become) a follower of Till Death Do Us Part via GFC.

2.  Tell me what stresses you out most about cooking!

Extra Entries:

3.  Like Trudeau on Facebook.

4.  Follow Trudeau on Twitter.

5.  Follow Till Death Do Us Part on Twitter.

6.  Tweet about this giveaway or post it on your blog.

7.  Enter the Natural Scents giveaway.

Seven ways to win!  Giveaway will be open until Sunday, September 18 at 10 p.m. CST.  U.S. residents only.  Winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced here asap!

Good luck!

Saffron Marigold Giveaway Winner!

The winner of the Saffron Marigold table runner is #29, Tanya, of Bright Bird!  Congrats, Tanya!  Thanks so much to all who entered. 

You can still enter the Natural Scents soy candle giveaway here! 

Cozy Crocheted Afghan

I love to crochet.  My grandmother taught me when I was little, and I've been a-crochetin' ever since.

Embarrasingly enough, I started this afghan over a year ago.  Moving (twice), blogging, crafting, pets, jobs, and my husband (not necessarily in that order!) sort of got in the way.

For me, the edging on this one really steals the show.  And my grandmother made herself a blue and white one in the same pattern, so I'll always think of her when I use it.

Cheerful and bright.

Cozy and warm.

Perfect for those cold winter days ahead.