Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Get fresh decorating ideas and share your sense of style at Micasastyle

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Do you enjoy decorating your home? Perhaps you’ve redecorated your bedroom – bought new curtains, bedding, painted the room and added some interesting pieces that brought the look of the room together?

I enjoy decorating the rooms in my home. Heck, if you read through this blog you’ll discover that we’ve slowly been renovating our whole home – tearing down walls, refinishing floors, venetian plastering the living room dining room and many other DIY tasks.

I love the sense of satisfaction I get when I’ve redecorated a room or completed a renovation project. If we get compliments from our friends and relatives when they visit our home that’s just icing on the cake.

If you’ve decorated a room in your house or completed a renovation project – even if you hired someone to bring your ideas to life and do the hard work, you might be interested in showing off your project over at Micasastyle. It’s an online community where you can share your design ideas with others who are interested in home decorating or perhaps visit to get fresh ideas for your next project.

You can registered as a member of Micasastyle for free and add photos of your space. Show off your decorating style and share your ideas.

Members can browse through photos on the site and as they view images of other members decorating projects they can leave comments, rate the images and as I said earlier members can share images of their own home as well.

When members upload photos of their spaces they can add information about where they got certain pieces. For example if you were to upload a photo of your living room you might add information about the cool lamp or wall decor that can be seen in the picture.

When you visit Micasastyle you’ll see the most recently added images, most popular and most viewed images on the front page. You can also search for specific decorating ideas by selecting “explore spaces” where you’ll find all the decorating image categories such as kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms and more.

I think this is a great site to get fresh ideas and to share your decorating style. Plus, if you have completed a decorating project you can possibly enter Micasastyles upcoming contest and win $10,000.





It’s amazing how the right lighting can change the look of a room

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The weather here in Toronto was cool for the month of May, but now that June is here it’s starting to heat up. By Friday it will be 31 Celsius (87.8 F) and we haven’t even put the air conditioners in the windows yet.

Since we’re unlikely to have air conditioning by Friday I’m glad that we have several ceiling fans throughout the house. They stir the air and even if the house is too warm that breeze created by the ceiling fans is helpful.

Actually, we use our ceiling fans year round. We reverse their motion in the winter so that warm air can circulate through the house better, and in the summer we reverse them again so that they can fan the cooler air. We can keep the thermostat a degree or two lower in the winter and save money on our heating bill thanks to the fans, and I’m sure they help when we use air conditioning as well.

All of our ceiling fans are equipped with lights so they provide some of the lighting within our home as well. Luckily all but one ceiling fan can use the low wattage florescent bulbs so we save money on our lighting bill too.

Earlier this evening I was reading a home lighting article on the HGTV website and, as usual, whenever I read home decor articles or watch decorating type TV shows I start thinking of what I can do in my own home. Remember we’re renovating, but when our work is done it will be lovely and I’ll need all kinds of new decor – especially lighting.

I visited the the Littman Bros website and had a look at their lighting products. They have quite a large selection of home lighting. They have just about every kind of lighting product you can think of – ceiling fans, under cabinet lighting, ceiling, wall, bath, lamps and even outdoor lighting.

While I was browsing the site I ended up looking at their forecast lighting. They have some lovely forecast chandeliers – ones that might look beautiful in our dining room when we’re done renovating. Sometimes changing the whole look and feel of a room is as simple as changing the lighting and I’m sure one of those chandeliers would make a huge difference in the look of our dining room area. They’re gorgeous.

If you’ve been thinking of purchasing new lighting for your home, or perhaps buying a ceiling fan to help cool your home on warm summer days (and save on your air conditioning bill) take a moment to visit Littman Bros, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with their selection. Oh, and they’re having a sale on landscape lighting right now too – 40% off. That’s a good deal!

Save money on your vacation with lowfares.com

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Summer is just about here and I’m sure that quite a few of you are beginning to plan your summer holiday. I don’t even know what we’re going to do for our summer vacation this year, but I’m sure I’ll try to find an interesting place for us to go soon.

If you are going to be flying anywhere you should visit lowfares.com where you’ll be able to find cheap flights to destinations all over the world.

Just type in the city you’ll be departing from and the city you’d like to fly to, plus the date of your planned holiday and LowFares.com will give you a selection of low fares a wide variety of travel sites. You can compare prices and flight details and chose which one works best for you.

You can also take a look at vacation deals or build your own vacation package by booking hotels and renting a vehicle directly through the lowfares.com website.

With the economy down and gas prices rising I’m sure you’ll be looking for ways to save money this summer. Yet everyone still wants to have a vacation, don’t they? So why don’t you visit lowfares.com and see if you can book a great holiday and save money at the same time?

Great selection of bar stools at Premiere Barstools

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As my regular readers know Chris and I are very slowly renovating our home. It’s definitely a work in progress. I do however have all the plans in my head of how I’d like to decorate once our renovations are complete.

When we finally get to the kitchen renovation I want to open up the wall between the kitchen and dining room / living room. I don’t want to knock the wall down, just have an opening like a large window. We’d use that area as a breakfast nook, as a way to visit with our guest while preparing items in the kitchen and of course as a way to serve or pass food from the kitchen to the dining room.

I’ve been keeping my eye open for either some nice kitchen bar stools or perhaps counter stools that would fit into our decor.

It will be at least a year before we start renovating our kitchen, but since I’m picky about decor I’m already looking for bar stools and all the other items that we’ll need.

If you are also looking for barstools for your kitchen, dining room or perhaps a bar area you might want to visit Premiere Barstools. They have a large selection of discount bar stools, counter stools, kitchen barstools, pub table sets, outdoor stools and tables and even extra tall stools.

I’ve spent some time looking at the various bar stool styles and I’m impressed with the selection. As I said earlier I’m very picky about decor. When I’ve seen bar stools in retail and department stores they often only had a few styles.

Well designed bar or counter stools can enhance the look of a room and add functionality. As I said earlier I think our guests will probably end up sitting on the bar stools in order to visit with us as we work in the kitchen preparing a meal or snacks.

What I like about the Premiere Barstool site is that you can search for bar stools by height, by style – kitchen, counter, bar, outdoor and so on as well as by the material the bar stools are made from such as metal, wood, contemporary, backless, or Upholstered. You can also search by price range. I love sites that offer a variety of ways to find the items that you want.

Premiere Barstools ships free to all of the continental United States and they also ship internationally.

I’m going to take a look at all the styles and see if I can find something that suits our home. Why don’t you take a look at their selection too.

Need parts for your car? Check out Go-Parts first

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A few weeks ago our car broke down while we were on the way to Chris’ parents house. We ended up getting our car repaired in another city and the car was basically stranded there for three days!

We normally have our car repaired and get regular maintenance done at a garage just around the corner from where we live. The garage is owned by the sons of one of our close neighbors. As a result we get quick service and sometimes get a deal when they can manage to give us one. They also allow us to order our own parts. Sometimes that has worked out well because we’ve been able to get parts cheaper than what they would have sold them to us for, so all we have to pay is labor when we supply our own parts.

If you happen to enjoy working on your own car or if you’d like to see if you can get parts for your car or truck cheaper online than what your local garage will charge why not visit Go-Part.com.

For example, you can visit their site and look for Nissan parts, or parts for just about all of the top vehicle makers such as Ford, Acura, BMW, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Jeep, Buick, Cadillac, Lexus, Mazda, Porche, Saab, Toyota, Saturn, Volvo and many more. All their vehicle parts are sold at discount prices.

Now I don’t know that much about car parts, but this site looks easy to use. Just click on your car makers name in the left hand menu and once you are on the manufacturers page you can select your car model and search for parts from there. For example if you have a Nissan Pathfinder just click on the word Pathfinder and a selection of parts will appear beneath the vehicle name.

Lets say your Pathfinder is a 2006 model and you need a left taillight. Just click on the 2005 – 2007 Nissan Pathfinder left tail light link and you can read the product description – such as what models it’s compatible with and then place your order.

Likewise if your Nissan Altima needs a new A/C condenser or a right side mirror for your 200sx you’ll be able to find the part at Go-Part.com.

Go-Part.com has a toll free number if you need to speak with their support personnel, plus there’s also live chat support as well. Plus this company ships to all countries which is good news since I’m in Canada. So the next time our Ford Contour breaks down, if we need an expensive part I’ll check online first.

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