This is one of those pinch me moments! I was recently asked to participate in the inaugural edition of

The Home Depot Style Challenge Summer Games

edition. For me this is huge, I'm the girl who likes walking the aisles of Home Depot on Fridays, that's my type of fun. The challenge material was: wood, metal or PVC. Once you received your challenge material, the goal was to create a game. My challenge material was to create a game using PVC pipes. I came up with the idea of making bowling pins from PVC. I wanted to game to be interactive, colorful and fun for all age groups.

This is one of those pinch me moments! I was recently asked to participate in the inaugural edition of The Home Depot Style Challenge Summer Games" target="_blank">The Home Depot Style Challenge Summer Games edition. For me this is huge, I'm the girl who likes walking the aisles of Home Depot on Fridays, that's my type of fun. The challenge material was: wood, metal or PVC. Once you received your challenge material, the goal was to create a game. My challenge material was to create a game using PVC pipes. I came up with the idea of making bowling pins from PVC. I wanted to game to be interactive, colorful and fun for all age groups.

Head over to

The Home Depot Apron Blog

, to see how I used PVC pipes to create bowling pins. In addition my husband and I also built a hanging chalkboard to keep score! The game was lots of fun to create, but was even better watching my family have fun on our back yard playing and knocking over those PVC pins. Also check out the other amazing creative games my fellow Challengers came up with! Hope to see your comments and thoughts on

The Apron Blog!

For the past several months, I've been contemplating buying roman shades for our living room, dining room and master bedroom.When we moved back into our home a year ago, we decided on a combination of Roman Shades and faux wood blinds throughout our home. Along with my girlfriends help, I recovered ready made roman shades with fabric transforming them into custom roman shades for Avery's room, our kitchen and master bathroom. I love custom look the roman shades gave our rooms, I have plans to recover Tabari's basic roman shade, once he approves fabric! I actually just ordered a few fabric swatch contenders and can't wait to see what he chooses!

I feel that bamboo roman shades add so much warmth and texture to shared living spaces and look amazing layered under draperies. Here are a few examples of bamboo shades, I'm totally smitten with.

via Decopad

via Better Homes & Gardens

via Decorpad

Since bamboo lined roman bamboo shades can be very pricey as most custom window treatments are, my plan is to be in stock shades and add privacy lining to the back of the roman shade. The lining would help give them a more finished look, while controlling light when closed. While I love the ease (light filtering, privacy etc) of our current setup of blinds on the windows mentioned above, they're also cumbersome and heavy and give off a sterile vibe. The exact opposite of what bamboo shades give. I'm the type of person who loves having their windows and blinds open all day letting fresh air inside and natural light, but since our blinds are so heave to raise, I find myself only opening them. Plus once the blinds are fully raised they stack super thick. I keep going back and forth between making the change to roman shades, or sticking with what we have.

For now, I'll keep pinning lovely images and be on the lookout for well made bamboo shades that I can customize.

Which type of shade do you prefer in your home? Mini blinds, Vertical Blinds, Faux Wood Blinds or Roman shades? And why?