Just wanted to pop on real quick to congratulate the uber lovely Bari on her win! She is the winner of the CSN Stores $45.00 gift card. I will have another giveaway soon, so stay tuned! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend unlike the Texas Longhorns who are losing terribly to Kansas State right now. Sigh.

Oh, and guess what else? Yours truly (ME!) is featured on HGTV’s Holiday Marketplace! YAY! I am seriously obsessed with all things HGTV, so this is a huge, huge honor for me. If you want to check it out, click here or look at the screen cap below.

See it? My wine labels right there towards the bottom? EEK! So psyched!

I’ll be giving away a dozen of those during the week of Thanksgiving in order to show how thankful I am for all you wonderful followers/readers. I’ve had a rough year with many highs and lows, and through it all I am so very thankful for all of you for your kind comments, e-mails and tweets. Seriously- you are amazing and make my life so much brighter.

This weekend, we’re just kind of laying low…playing some Rock Band 3, using our new riding lawn mower, and lounging around. I have felt inspired to take pictures lately, so I wanted to share some with you all. I am finally shooting in mostly manual mode and really striving to take great SOOC shots. SOOC=straight out of camera= little-to-no processing/editing with Photoshop. Enjoy!

Have a beautiful, fun and safe weekend!

Well, we all know around these parts that Daniel and I bought a house ALMOST a month ago. Time flies! While most of our parents and immediate family know where we live and such, we wanted to send out some holiday cards announcing our new address plus spreading some good 'ole holiday cheer.

I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Shutterfly in the past, so naturally I had to browse through their Christmas cards to see what suits my fancy. Here are my 3 favorites:

Love the simplicity of this one. Might have a picture of us in front of the house if we used this design. Or just a picture of the house by itself in black and white might look awesome as well. Lots of options with this simple design!

This one is my absolute favorite. I like that we can update people and perhaps make it a bit funny and lighthearted. It also eliminates writing a lot on the inside of the card, so I can actually get them out sooner rather than later. It is also really cute for families with kids. We have a dog, which we treat like our kid, so this works for us, too.

But then again, I do love a simple black design as well. And may I say I am proud of myself for not picking a card with damask on it? Everyone always expects that from me, so I tried super hard not to pick damask! But hey, if you want damask, they do have plenty of cards with the design.

And of course with holiday cards, mean new holiday address labels! Love the label below- it’s modern and chic. I am not a green person usually, but I love the green!

Do you send out holiday cards? Do you mail them or do you do an e-card? I really hope to get mine out this month, so I should order some of these cards ASAP!

Sponsor disclaimer: Shutterfly is providing me a promo code for 50 free cards in return for me writing this blog post about their holiday cards. My opinions are my own.

Mirrored furniture is all the rage right now, and you know this by now if you read home décor blogs. Very few attempts at DIYing mirrored furniture have impressed me (no offense to those who have tried), so I think this is one of those things that is best purchased at a fab price. And wouldn’t you know it, I found you all some great deals!

Item #1: Mirrored Side Table

$90 at Target, which is pretty cheap, but…

It can be found for $76 at Overstock with no tax!

Item #2: Mirrored vanity stand/console table/writing desk

Quite the versatile piece of furniture!

$350 for the STAND only at Pier 1 Imports

$200 at Overstock (that is a savings of at least $150)

Item #3: Mirrored nightstand

$600 from Home Decorators Collection

$200 from Overstock

I know all the finds came from Overstock, but I guess the point is to show ya how much you can save by searching for the Luxe for Less. Have an item you want to buy, but don’t want to shell out mucho moola for? E-mail me at MonicaWantsIt@Gmail.com and I will do my best to help you out!

Also, don’t forget you can win $45 to CSN stores by entering my giveaway! Deadline is Friday at noon CST.

I’ve never done electrical stuff before, like installing a hardwire fixture, but after watching some YouTube videos I felt confident I could do it. And by confident, I mean completely clueless, but willing to try. Like most Disney stars. (Aww, poor Demi Lovato though…)

During Labor Day weekend, I caved and bought a chandelier for the foyer because I wanted something fancy-schmancy when you walked into my house. I had my eye set on one from Overstock, and one evening I went and it said they only had 2 left. I bought it on the spot!

Here she is:

(If you like this fixture and want to buy it, click here. But you might not if you keep reading…)

So, it sat in the box for awhile, until this past weekend when I got a wild hair up my butt and decided to try installing it all by lonesome. DH was at work, so I was seriously ALL alone. I thought I’d have it up in 30 minutes, ooh and ahh a bit, blog about it, and drink some beer.

Boy was I wrong.

Let me walk you through my experience. Ready?

The first thing you should do whenever you’re working with anything that could shock ya is to turn off the power on the breaker box. Ours was labeled for us, but if not, you need to figure out which switch turns off the power to the area you’re working in. That is SUPER important, mkay?

Next, gather stuff you’ll need. For me it was a ladder/step stool & a cordless drill. I highly recommend not using a chair to do this sorta thing.

So, here’s a picture of the light fixture when we moved in:

Small, brassy, tacky.

Step 1: TURN OFF THE POWER. I can’t stress this enough.

Step 2: Use a drill (cordless or regular) to remove the old light fixture. Be careful of any glass components. I also kept everything from the light fixture just in case I completely screwed up and needed to put it back. You never know people. Your area should look like this:

Step 3: Attach new chandelier mounting bracket (silver thing in the middle) and connect the wires (usually black, white & ground). This is where my installation went terribly wrong. In the above picture you can see the mounting bracket (silver), white wire, black wire, and the ground wire is up in there, too. My chandelier has 2 clear + 1 ground wire. And I was doing this all by lonesome=not easy.

See what I mean?

I went to YouTube, found nothing. Googled, found nothing. So what did I do?

Yeah, I ate the bag. Not literally the bag, but you know.

Tried it one way…nada.

Tried it another way…still nothing.

Then I cursed, called the hubby, ate at McDonald’s, went to Wal-Mart and came home and did this instead:

Lurve. It only took me about 20 minutes, was super easy, and I felt so empowered that I DID IT. Furthermore, it works better than my original idea because when you walk into our front door you can go to hallway to the left (bedrooms), go straight into the living room or go to the right into my office/dining room. It just makes sense. Oh, and it was easy, too.

You also can’t beat the $25 price tag.

My $125 chandy? Yeah, it’s sitting on the floor in timeout. It may become our master bedroom light or maybe the dining room. Have any of you all ever installed a chandelier that didn’t have color-coded wires? Am I doomed? Should I hire an electrician? He charges $65 an hour, and I am cheap!

Besides waste 4 hours of my time, I did some thrifting on Saturday. Can I just say that thrifting is sooo relaxing? I got up early on Saturday, had breakfast and some coffee, then thrifted for about an hour or two. Divine. What did I find? Lemme show ya!

Pair of really tall, silver/mirrored candle holders- $4.00 for the pair. Can’t wait to use these on my mantel at Christmas time.

Some candlesticks for 30-cents each. Loved the colors. Goodwill has such great stuff!

A hurricane (tall!) with a glass base for $2.00 (Kinda hard to see…) Also from Goodwill.

Some pretty pillows, $1.50 for the pair! But my most fave item? This gorgeous, plush, tan velvet chair with nailhead trim. SWOON. She was 50% off, so I got the chair for only $45! That may seem high for a chair, but I love supporting my local Goodwill, and I love the style/shape/quality. Totally worth the money.

Even Pee Wee likes the chair. “You bought this for me, right? Thanks!”

Found anything good while thrifting lately? I’d love to hear about it!