Today's is my birthday and I'm 33 and not feeling a day over 26! That must be a good thing Right!?! My birthday will be low key enjoying long lingering romantic dinner with my husband this weekend, eating good food and having some grownup drinks. We planned on going out tonight but Avery has a double ear infection my poor baby. So we'll feel better waiting a few days to celebrate. Plus it gives me more time to get ready and get sexy, lol. I put together a Birthday Wish list and happy to say a few have already been fulfilled # 3 & # 6 but even if didn't receive anything, I already have everything I already need. I know I sound mushy but ts true.

1. Adele 21 2. Etsy: Jane Austen Quote Mr. Darcy 3. Etsy Gold Agate Bracelet 4. Martha Stewart American Food Cookbook & Michelle Obama American Grown 5. Nepresso U 6. Timex Easy Reader Watch

1. Am I the only one who still doesn't own this CD & is still buying Cd's? Regardless I need this one and love listening to her melodic voice, gives me goose bumps. 2. I love Jane Austen and I read almost all her books & watched the movies, I can't wait to add this printed quote in my bedroom. 3. I've fallen in love with gold again, its all Gold Everything! This agate bracelet is amazing! I can't wait to wear it. 4. I love cookbooks and can't wait to grow my collection again. 5. I've been lusting after this beauty for quite sometime, lets hope it shows up in our new kitchen. 6. I love classic watches and haven't owned one in ages, and love that I have a new one to enjoy, ooh and its gold :)

What's on your birthday wish list? Also, I'm left handed so I'm curious to know what arm you wear your watch on? I wear my on my right hand easy to read.

Just a few days ago I shared our first official tour of house with the drywall up, read more about home tour

here

. Since sharing our tour, the drywall was been completely tapped and textured.

case your a new reader to my blog, we lost the majority of our belongings and house due to a fire in July 2012 you can read more about the fire

here

. We are now in the re-building stage and very grateful

to rebuild our home

One thing I loved about our old walls was the texture, not rough not too smooth just right so we went that route again the finish is called imperfect smooth. It fits perfectly with our homes age. After the drywall was completed it was time to address our hardwood floors, just barely two years ago we refinished our floors DIY Style, read more about how we did our floors

here

We were hopeful that could 'save' some of the original hardwoods seam in new hardwood floors in our house as needed. It was really important that our new unfinished hardwoods were the same size and type of wood, as or existing ones so everything would be consistent and seamless.

The 'flooring guys'

, installed new unfinished matching hardwoods in our kitchen & dining room, portions of our living room, hallways and bedrooms. The flooring guys did an amazing job of matching our old hardwoods with our new hardwoods.

Our new unfinished oak hardwoods came all the way from Kentucky, from a company called

Lebanon Oak Flooring

. The company has been in business since the late 1800's. I love that our flooring comes from a company that's been around for a really really long time and has a history, just like our original hardwood flooring.

When we refinished our hardwood floors almost two years ago we with the Minwax color

Early American

. We were pretty certain would go use the same color stain again, until we started looking at the color swatches.

This time around Hasani was really drawn to Dark Walnut, but I really liked Jacobean The only way to truly know which color will look best on your floors, is to test the stain on your hardwoods, because the sample swatch might look completely different on your floors depending on your wood, age of type etc. If you follow me on Instagram then your spoiled and got a sneak peak at the stain colors we were considering. My user name on Instragram is Mrsclh...hope to see you on there!

Dark Walnut

: On our floors dark walnut was much lighter and had reddish brown undertones. In the sample swatch the color look more brown and showed less grain detail.

Jacobean

: Our on floors was a nice deep brown but not too dark and showed all the grain variations in our wo

od the showed a range of colors from light to dark.

In the picture you can see how the stain isn't as dark on our hardwoods as it is on the swatch.

We looked at both colors side by side in natural light and full sunlight with the front door open & closed. We both agreed we loved how Jacobean looked, it showed all the pretty variations of the wood grain deeper and lighter in some areas.

That's one the beauties of staining wood, seeing all the color variations and not getting one solid flat color. Yet the overall colors will look consistent

. After selecting our stain color, the 'floor guys' came back the next day to apply the stain. I'll share more details of the staining process the floors professional use & our floors of course!

What stain colors do you like on hardwoods, lighter or darker? What to you think of the stain we choose?