Valentine’s Gift Idea: 214 Things I Love About You!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all have a great weekend planned. Before I dive into today’s post, I want to bother you one last time and say that today is the last day that you can vote for your favorite blogs on the Apartment Therapy Homies. If you like what you read, we would SO SO SO appreciate it if you took 10 seconds to vote for Our Cozy Cubbyhole so we can attract some new readers. Thank you SO much for your support!!

Valentine’s Day is officially less than a week away and I have talked to a lot of people that are still trying to decide on a cute little gift for their significant others. Well you are in luck because I have an idea that will work for a boy or  girl, is very inexpensive, and is oh-so-thoughtful! Although this was originally a gift that I made for Walker for our anniversary this year, the gift can absolutely work for V Day.

I strated off by carrying around a little piece of paper for several days, constantly jotting down little things I love about my man. Some were sentimental and mushy, some were funny and light-hearted, some were not family-friendly, and others fell somewhere in between. I decided to compile a list of 200 things since it was our two year anniversary but you could do 214 things in honor of 2/14! Once the list was all set, I bought a really beautiful Moleskine pocket sketchbook from Barnes & Noble that had really nice sturdy pages and a classy look.

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I originally planned on decorating the outside but then I realized that this was a gift for a dude and he wouldn’t necessarily care about (or care for) an overly-decorated book. So I decided to keep it plain on the outside so it could be stored anywhere without attracting too much attention. After all, this is kind of a private thing and Walker is a private guy.  In fact, I had to promise I wouldn’t post too many examples of the stuff I wrote in his book on this blog post! ;)

Anyway, once I decided that the front would remain undecorated, I used the inside of the front cover to introduce the concept: Two Years and Two Hundred Things I Love About You. Like I mentioned before, 214 may be a better number to use for Valentine’s Day (and you could do something fun to mimic the slash between the 2 and the 1 like the date! Get creative!).
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Since I promised Walker I wouldn’t post too mant examples, I limited it to two pictures. But you get the idea of how I decorated each page. Again, I kept it simple and not to girly/decorative because it was more Walker’s style this way (but feel free to go nuts with yours!). I used a bunch of stamps (including the cork heart stamp I made for last V Day), some silly drawings, and some awesome SMASH tape that had phrases like “Love it!” and “Like this a lot!”ThingsILoveAboutYou3 ThingsILoveAboutYou4 ThingsILoveAboutYou5

This entire project cost me less than $16 ($14 for the sketchbook and a couple bucks for the tape) but packs a huge punch of LOVE! ;)

Cheap, super thoughtful, and very personal… you can’t find a better combination than that for a Valentine’s Day gift! So get to it… happy crafting!

Now Our Coffee Table Won’t Collapse and Kill the Dog!

First things first, I’d like to start things off today by saying that if you love what you read around here, we would be SO grateful if you took 10 seconds to vote for Our Cozy Cubbyhole in the Apartment Therapy Homies. We would LOVE to gain more readers!  Your support means a lot to us!! YOU ARE THE BEST!

Moving right along… I am happy to announce that it is only February and we are able to scratch another apartment new year’s resolution off of our list! For the past few months, our coffee table was so wobbly that it the top would shift 4 inches if you put your feet on it. It was bad. We could have added brackets as a temporary fix but we really wanted to upgrade to something a little nicer.

Over the weekend, we decided to finally take the plunge and did a bunch of searching. While we found a few tables we loved on the World Market website, they charges these ridiculous “delivery surcharges” that basically negated any sale price (and put the tables just slightly out of our price range if we were being money-conscious). We almost decided to splurge and go for it before we got the brilliant idea to look at Overstock.com. Seriously, best decision ever! Not only did we find a bunch of tables we loved, the prices were reasonable and the shipping was free! We decided on the winner, which was on sale for $139.99 from $222.99!OverstockPage1On top of that already amazing deal, I had a coupon code for an additional 7% off and there were no tax or shipping charges so the total came out to only $130.19!OverstockPage2It arrived in perfect condition two days later. The only only hiccup in this near-perfect ordering situation was that “Assembly: Assembled” was a bold-faced lie… we most definitely got a disassembled table and had to put in some elbow grease. However, most people know I have an affinity for putting together furniture so I wasn’t too put off by the little surprise.

Enough of me blabbering… LET’S SEE A PICTURE!!

Hold on. Bo wants to be in a picture first...

Hold on. Bo wants to be in a picture first…

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We are so happy with the way the new table looks and fits in our room. Plus it is so new and shiny, it makes us want to keep the house clean. ;)

Happily, we can scratch another thing off of our resolutions list:

1. KITCHEN LOVE – Since we didn’t quite get to this in 2012, I would love to get our kitchen project underway early this year!

 

2. ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE! – We need to do this every year! We got a bunch of Christmas gifts (books, DVDs, etc.) and have no where to put them so we need to do some spring cleaning to make room.

 

3. STORAGE SOLUTIONS – Now that Walker and I have lived together for over a year, we have slowly filled up all of our current storage. Aside from putting everything in the garage, we need to come up with some new ways to add storage (especially for books, DVDs, CDs, and school supplies!).

 

4. NEW COFFEE TABLE AND RUG Our current coffee table is hanging on by a thread! We absolutely need to save up and replace it. We would also love to get a new, upgraded rug for underneath… class up our living room a little! :)

 

5. SCHOOL WORKSPACE – I love our writing desks but I am going to be doing a lot of drafting and projects that take up much more space/storage for school. We need to figure out a way to make a little more space for doing schoolwork, which is going to be really tough!

The best part is that the table was so inexpensive and we found a goldmine with Overstock so we actually ordered a brand new rug to go with the table! It arrives in a few days so get excited! Our living room is going to look like a whole new place. More pictures soon! :)

Pretty Tags and a Super Quick Favor! :)

I hope you all are having a relaxing pre-Superbowl Sunday morning and are preparing your stomachs for a greasy feast this afternoon. I know I am! I have decided to start stepping up my Etsy shop packaging game in the next few weeks so I thought I would share a little sneak peek of some of the fun! The pink and red tags are so festive for this month of LOVE. I also have a pretty blue/green set that will be perfect for spring! :)
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On an unrelated note, it is that time of year again… the Apartment Therapy Homies!AThomies2013

Last year we came in 99th place with 25 votes, which isn’t too shabby considering this little blog was only a couple months old! The best part of the whole thing was that we gained a lot of new readers through the contest so that is our goal again! If you like what you read around here, would you be wonderful enough to take 10 seconds to vote for Our Cozy Cubbyhole? You only have to vote once but have to sign up or log in to Apartment Therapy to do so (don’t worry- it is totally free and they don’t send you any spam!). We would be so so so very grateful! You guys are seriously the BEST.

Enjoy your Superbowl eats (oh, and the game. I’ll be wearing my Giants shirt while weeping) and thanks again for all of your love and support!

Xoxo,
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