On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a Bishop Boutique certificate for a fabulous shoes and accessories shopping spree...

As part of our Twelve Days of Christmas giveaway, we're happy to bring to you a $50 gift certificate to Bishop Boutique. Located in the heart of Old Town, Bishop Boutique is a chic and intimate sanctuary for the fashion savvy. It offers a unique selection of shoes, handbags, accessories and seasonal flair to keep any woman looking stylish all year long - even in this cold weather! From the avant-garde to more classic styles, indulge in a shopping experience designed to look and feel like the closet of your dreams! 

Can we also mention that Bishop Boutique is routinely one of Lulu's favorite stores? She always tries to pull her way into the store to visit with the store clerks and get a...

This is it, Hurricane Sandy is upon us. They've been calling this a historic and massive storm, and to not be fooled by its category 1 classification. We're starting to see what this is all about as the rain has begun falling at a steady pace as Sandy, still substantially offshore by hundreds of miles, begins to interact with another storm system coming across the country. I just think it's a little bit funny that this hurricane of epic proportions bears the same name as my mother-in-law.

We'll be keeping tabs on Sandy throughout the day and will update you throughout the day with additions to this post.

Real Time Reporting

Here's a live look at Sandy out our front window. I'm most worried about the several very large trees along the sidewalks as the wind begins to pick up. This image will update automatically every few seconds.

Personally, I have to eat my words a bit. Last week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, a coworker said "Looks like we're gong to get hit by a hurricane." I responded incredulously, "It's too cold to hit up north and it will probably go out to sea!" Boy was I wrong. 

As we all began to realize that this hurricane is more or less imminent, Frankenstorm preparations started in earnest over the weekend around the area. Most utilized an absolutely picture perfect fall day to do a bit of shopping and stocking up. We headed out on Saturday to pick up some necessary food and supplies from the farmer's market and our local Safeway. We found the grocery store shelves to still be largely stocked, though there were some exceptions. The batteries had already been picked over with all of the D cells wiped clean from the display...

...and the absolute essentials were already quite picked over, as only a few six packs of beer remained.

Yesterday we noticed quite a bit more prep around the area. The Papyrus store on King Street went to extra lengths and actually boarded up all of the windows. This is actually the only store we saw on the main thoroughfare in our town that had gone to these extremes.

Down near the flood-prone areas of Old Town, the city was filling and giving away sand bags to residents looking to shore up their homes from a potentially rising Potomac River.

I snapped a quick before photo of lower King Street, which I fully expect to be flooded with both news crews as well as water.

Blech. It looked like a 1980s man cave in the woods. Therefore one of our first major projects after buying the house was to complete a quick and inexpensive makeover using the same appliances, counters, and cabinets since that's what our budget would allow. Here's what we've been living with the past seven or so years.

Because our kitchen and sun porch are largely one space (after we removed the wall when we found massive termite damage), changes to one...

We're very happy to announce the winner of our Reader Reward for a $100 Father's Day gift card to The Home Depot. Congratulations to ashley, a reader from Cleveland, who'll be celebrating Father's Day with a trip to see the Indians play. I can't think of anything much better for Father's Day. We hope she'll stop back and share the useful project(s) this great Father's Day gift card assisted with!

Thanks to everyone for entering, and sharing all of your plans. We enjoyed reading what the weekend has in store.

It's reader reward time again! In honor of Father's Day we're giving one of our lucky readers a $100 gift card to The Home Depot. 

If you remember, we did a similar reader reward about a month ago for Mother's Day. We absolutely loved hearing all of your plans on how you planned to celebrate the day. Though Mother's Day is an extremely important event to celebrate, we obviously can't leave all of the DIY Dads out of the mix on their important day. So we want to hear about all of the cool and extremely manly events you have planned.

Are you taking in a baseball game? Maybe grilling out? Or perhaps you'll put on your tool belts and work on a few house projects? (I think that's how Lulu will be celebrating with me). 

Does anyone remember our list of New Year Resolutions that we put out there for all to see (and hold us to)? One of the items on this list for 2012 is "redecorate the sun porch to remove the tired floral window treatments, and to better incorporate the wine fridge into the furniture layout." I'm happy to report that I've made a lot of changes, but not happy when I say that I hate the space more now than when I started.

Let's start with how it looked in the beginning. Here's a look at the 8'x10' space when we first bought our house. The tile was ugly and cracked, the walls were a dingy grayish white, and the room had zero personality. 

Approximately a year after we moved in, we had done a bit to spruce it up, but not a significant amount. We were focused on other parts of the house at the time, so we applied a coat of soft yellow paint to match the kitchen, threw some existing odds and ends in the space to furnish the room, and called it "good enough."

Following the discovery of massive leak/termite/structural damage in this room (more on that disastrous experience here), we took out the offending wall, opened up the doorway between the kitchen and sun porch, installed a new beam to support the floor above, and finally had a more open flow between the two rooms. In addition to the removal of the doorway, the next phase of the room featured new custom window treatments and floor paint to hide the ugly brown tile. We were still using furniture odds and ends that were childhood pieces or outdoor furniture from our apartment. The look was greatly improved, but we still had progress to make.  

The next stage of improving this space didn't require a lot of time or money, but seemed to make the biggest impact. With the addition of a sisal rug on clearance from Home Goods, bringing in a larger lamp that we already owned, and adding a few IKEA purchases (the new wicker planter and storage cubes that Mel is lounging on in this photo), we were really happy with the space. 

We're very happy to announce the winner of our Reader Reward for a $100 Mother's Day gift card to The Home Depot. Congratulations to Antonella @ LoveYourHome, a Canadian reader. We hope she'll stop back and share the useful project(s) this great Mother's Day gift card assisted with!

Thanks to everyone for entering, and keep your eyes open for a similar Father's Day celebration in the coming weeks.

We're giving one of our lucky readers a $100 gift card to The Home Depot, but more on that in a minute.

Is it just me, or is anyone else in total disbelief that it's May already?! The days and weeks seem like they're screaming by, but you have to be sure to take a moment to remember that the month of May brings a very special holiday -- Mother's Day. This year my parents are going to be in town over Mother's Day weekend, and I feel very fortunate to be able to spend Mother's Day with my mom this year. In honor of the day, I have a few special surprises up my sleeve for her visit, but I don't have a lot of time to plan, so I'd better get my act in gear.

Over the last several weeks we've been working on our outdoor area and getting it in shape for guests. This is as much for our own benefit as it is for the people we have visiting because we really love entertaining friends and family in the backyard. The work we've been doing is actually one small part of what we're trying to accomplish before the Mother's Day weekend.  

What we've been doing involves everything from planting the herb and vegetable garden, to simple cleanup around the yard. A couple weekend ago Alex and our friend Colin actually handled the dreaded task of cleaning out the stinky pond.