A Note About My "Before & After" Pics + a GIVEAWAY!

In light of Monday's Before + After post, I have something that I want to say. Something that I feel I should have said on Monday...but first:

A GIVEAWAY! The fine people over at Frette are offering two of their fragrance products (shown above) to Starr Struck readers! Hooray!

There will be two winners--one will win a set of three bedlinen fragrances and the other will win a set of three drawer freshener discs--and all you have to do to enter is one (or more!) of the following, as listed in the widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Details

You can enter by following the directions in the Rafflecopter widget to the left.

Use the Rafflecopter widget to submit your entry. 

You can enter more than once but can only enter by commenting if you've ALREADY followed Starr Struck on both Pinterest and Instagram, or you don't have one (or both) of these social media accounts.

The giveaway will close this Sunday, 3/22, at 11:59 pm EST.

I’ll then choose TWO winners using Rafflecopter and will announce these winners next week. And so sorry, but this giveaway is only available to U.S. residents :( 

You can view the full terms + conditions by clicking on the Terms & Conditions link within the Rafflecopter widget. 

Now for what I wanted to say about my Before + After post:

I don't think I made it very clear in this post that all of the work that went into those Before + After pics was really, really hard, and definitely wasn't as glamorous as the pics might make it look. 

What the bright, shiny, happy pics don't show are the fights and breakdowns that Ben and I had while working on the house, my dry cuticles that started bleeding from all of the chemicals and hot water (wallpaper removal), the tears that I shed when the light fixture we'd just tried re-wiring for the third time didn't work, and I could go on and on...

The fact is, just like we all already know, the internet often only shows the highlight reel, and that's exactly what Before + After pics do, too. 

Yes, our living room/dining room and kitchen are coming along swimmingly, but our bedroom looks like a weird empty wasteland, covered with piles of clothing and discarded shoes, and we've started referring to our office as our "elephant graveyard." 

Also, what you can't see in the pics are the yet-to-be-cleaned Sayde pee stains on the *brand new* rug (Sayde has a newfound need to mark her territory in our new house), the gunky, yellowed trim, the scuffed up wood floors that we won't be fixing anytime soon, and again, I could go on and on. 

I so appreciate your kudos and encouragement, but just want to remind you that what you see in the staged picture isn't always the whole truth. 

So there you have it. I hope you still like me and think our DIY house work is cool, pee stains and all... ;)  

Now go enter the giveaway and good luck!