This blu-ray dvd burner is amazing! After both my mac desktop disc drive stopped working and our home dvd player stopped working, my family was left with no way to put photos onto discs or to watch movies from anywhere but our Wii by using Instant Netflix. So, when I was contacted by a store I love, Staples to see if I would like to participate in a review through Staples and could choose any item I’d like, I knew exactly what Iwould choose that would make everyone in our family happy.

I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating it was for me to be working with photography clients and needing to produce discs for them without a working disc drive on my mac. Yes, I have my little man to blame – although the apple store happily removed a foreign object from the drive last year, it has never worked the same since. So, each time I did photography work, I was going through a very long, aggravating process to get the photos to disc via another computer after editing them on my mac. I could not be happier with how this drive performs and how easy it is to use. It is so easy, that I thought for sure there must be more steps as I was setting it up and using it the first time.

As for my kids, they can now watch their DVDs again and couldn’t be happier about that. We do love instant Netflix, but it was frustrating to have stashes of DVDs that we couldn’t do anything with before. The blu-ray DVD player/burner is the perfect solution for our family when we are plugged in at work or play. Now we can add watching new movies on DVD to our Friday night pizza and wii night.

My daughter can pop a new CD in (Taylor Swift anyone?) and load her music to Itunes in a heartbeat. I love that it’s simple enough for ALL of us to use and that it has given us more options when it comes to both music and movies.

We haven’t even begun to touch the options we have with this DVD burner and love it!! I am not sure I even know how (or why?) I’d burn a DVD but I love that I can if I have to and in the meantime, my family can do all the things they love and that I can continue my photography business with much more ease than before. It has been completely wonderful for all of us.

Thank you, Staples!

It has been a loooooong time coming for this little addition to our kitchen space. Space-wise, our kitchen is big. Functional and storage wise, not so much. There has always been a big gap between the sides of the kitchen and I have played with different ideas for an island to bring everything together.

Just for fun, let’s take a look back at the kitchen from way back when we first bought this mess of a house.

Yes, that is me, many months pregnant in a rickety old kitchen with no wall.

My, how far we’ve come.

It went from that, to this:

Then we painted it a lighter blue last year:

And now, we have this:

I first saw this kitchen island, the Ikea Stenstorp for those that are curious, at my hubby’s family’s cottage. They have a tiny rustic little cabin in the woods up in Canada and did a few changes this past summer, which included adding this island to their small space. Well, the moment I walked into that cottage and saw the island, I knew it was perfect for my kitchen here at home in Florida.

I forgot all about it, as often those things we want but don’t need fall to the back of our minds.

Then, back in January, my mom and I went to Ikea together to get some dishes she wanted. I was strolling through the kitchen area and saw it and said “Oh! That is the island that would be so perfect in my kitchen!” My mom eyed it and agreed and we continued walking. She was going to surprise me that day and buy it for me, but it turned out that it didn’t fit in her car so we had to leave it for another trip with another vehicle (or at least one without kids in the back).

Another month passed and a couple of weeks ago my mom said she was ready to go back to Ikea to get me that kitchen island. I checked online and they had one left in stock. It’s a 2 hour drive each way. A little risky for one left in stock. And my mom remembered the one box we saw that day being damaged so she was worried about getting there and having it not work out.

In a fleeting moment of resourcefulness, frugality and wanting to save time, I looked on our local Craigslist for “Kitchen Island” and a looooong list came up. I scrolled through and there was “Ikea Kitchen Island”. Before I even clicked, I thought, “there is no way it is *the* kitchen island”, but it was. The listing was almost a month old. I thought, “there is no way it is still available”, but it was. I made arrangements to pick up that very island the next day from someone an hour closer each way and for $125 less. Score! My mom was thrilled, I was thrilled. We drove there together to pick it up in the pick up truck my father so graciously let us girls borrow. The girl had the stools I wanted also and threw those in for a few more dollars. We drove home happy as could be. Then it started raining. I kid you not, it has not rained here in Florida in months. The *one* afternoon that we are driving with a piece of furniture in the back of a truck, it downpours. I couldn’t make these things up. We stopped at my mom’s house and found a tarp and she and I stood out in the pouring rain, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, while strapping the tarp down over it. I still had to drive it another 45 minutes to my house by myself in the storm – and oh, that storm followed me all the way home.

But when we pulled that island off the truck and carried her (congratulations! It’s a girl!) inside and set her in my kitchen, I just heaved a sigh of relief and laughed at what an adventurous day it had been.

She’s been in my kitchen just over a week or so now and I am seriously in love. The extra shelves with storage space.

The surfaces for my kids to do artwork and for my hubby to leave tools laying around.

I thought about straightening up, clearing everything out and making everything shiny and perfect before I took pictures for this post, but I decided against it. It can be so draining to see spaces online that have no signs of life in them. Yes, I love clear counters and I love clean floors. But we live here, too. So, today, you get to see art laying around, my hubby’s tools from the new project going on, and my running hat. I hope you’ll love me anyway.