Thanks to some wild and woolly house plants. We both spent years in apartments so we have been toting along some of our plants for a very long time. And the thing about apartments is that space is at a premium along with sunlight. So we basically had one plant stand crammed full of greenery by the one sunny window at our last apartment before buying our house. Naturally we just transported it to our house. But the time has come. To say goodbye and start anew. With a fresh crop of not so crazy looking plants.
All posts tagged Decor
Room and Board…..Outlet
That’s right. In case you didn’t know. Room and Board, the high-end, trendy, and incredible furniture manufacturer is not only straight up Minnesotan, but it has an outlet store. A few miles from our house. I die. While I dream of the day that we can waltz into the regular store and buy something retail, I would probably kill someone who spilled a drop of wine on a sofa that cost me $4,798.00 (like this one). So to avoid all of that, we stalk the outlet store. And it finally paid off with the deal of a lifetime. Does it exactly match anything we own? No. Is it it the right proportions for our petite house? No. Was it amazingly luscious and $880 off the original price? Yes and yes. We pounced.
It’s Turning into an Obsession
A chalkboard obsession. For real. Dain asked me the other day if I would paint a child’s room in floor to ceiling chalkboard paint. I said no, but only because I contemplated how many little cans that would require. I would obviously only paint the entire bottom half of the walls in chalkboard. Kids aren’t that tall. In all seriousness. Because I find it delightfully fun. Like I am young again. Not that we’re that old, but we do have under two years before the big 3-0. So while Dain was installing our new toilet, I worked the chalkboard paint as promised in our newly improved itty bitty pantry.
B-I-N-G-O-C-O-A-S-T-E-R-S
As you probably now if you’re following our adventures, we spent an abnormal amount of time perusing the games section at Goodwill last weekend in hopes of finding a Scrabble game for our Pinterest Challenge art. Of course we did not find Scrabble, but we managed to come home with two Bingo games. TWO. At the bargain price of $1.99 each. While it is certainly not as fun as the live version (since there are no daubers or jackpots or screaming ladies in glittery tops involved), Bingo does come in a boxed edition. Were we just delirious from all of our shopping and the lack of working air conditioning in our car? We definitely were, but that doesn’t explain our purchases. While suffering from heat stroke, Dain actually had the brilliant and crafty idea to take the little Bingo cards and turn them into coasters. He is an art major you know.
A Pinterest Challenge? Why,Yes. We Accept.
Not only are we bloggers (albeit newbies), but we also follow a few other blogs. One of our favorites is Young House Love, which is how we found out about this challenge. Sherry (and John by proxy) over at YHL teamed up with Katie from Bower Power, Lana from Making a House a Home, and Emily from Style by Emily Henderson, and the ladies threw down a challenge. A Pinterest Challenge. And we have accepted. The parameters were pretty wide open to let the creative juices flow. The idea is to act on all of that eye candy we peruse for hours on end by creating something inspired by Pinterest. In full disclosure, this is only our second attempt at making something that we’ve seen on Pinterest (the first being our brickends). So thank you to our fellow bloggers for giving us a much needed kick in the pants. We owe our crafty new wall candy to them.
Custom Art to Cover the T.V.
We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to have a t.v. in our living room. Which is laughable because we currently get 10 channels. By choice (or at least that’s what we tell ourselves in our quest to be more productive and less Bravo obsessed). As we mentioned yesterday, the first problem was the lack of a working cable outlet which necessitated the installation of a cable hanging out the side of our house (which we finally disguised here). Another obstacle was where to put the t.v. in our relatively small dining room/living room since we did not have room for a console. We ended up hanging it on the wall thanks to an affordable wall mount from Monoprice. That only left a need to hide the black beast. Not really a need. More of a desire. Of mine. That Dain indulged. The end result being a custom piece of art perfectly sized to disguise our television.
Living Room Frame Gallery. Done and Done.
At least for now. We’ve shared our plan and our process over the past few weeks, and now that we have officially completed our original frame wall layout, it’s inevitable that we need even more frames to take it all the way up and over. Mostly because we love it, and it is kind of addicting. We sort of randomly chose things to go on our wall, but now that I step back and look at it, it is a true reflection of us and some of the most important aspects of our lives: each other, family, travel and adventure, humor, and a few things that we just like. Enough said.
DIY Chalkboard Bottles
Nobody loves a free project like we do. And this easy repurpose was 100% f-r-e-e thanks to a few bottles we had lying around and a little can of chalkboard paint that we’ve been hoarding for a fun project. I got the idea last weekend while we were at Gertens, a local garden center with a cutsy gift shop inside. While perusing the wares, I noticed chalkboard bottles for sale, and one had the word “menu” painted at the top. They were around $20 so I did not reach for my wallet, but it did get me thinking…..that I could make them at home. So we did. And we’re busy crushing on them.
Frame it. Hang it. Love it.
Well, we had an exceptionally productive (and late) Tuesday night. Cutting our cable down to 10 basic channels has actually had that effect on us….we do stuff instead of loafing on the couch (since we only get seriously horrible shows now). So with the All-Star baseball game on for background (yah Michael Cuddyer), we made some serious progress on our frame wall. We shared our idea with you last week in this post, but essentially, we have a vision of a gallery of frames hanging above our couch in the living room like the ones we’ve been seeing everywhere lately (blogs, Pinterest…even our local Pottery Barn). And we knew we would LIKE it, but after hanging a template and a few finished pieces, it is LOVE. And we are OBSESSED.
Frames….Coming to a Wall Near Us
A lot of them. We’ve had the idea in our heads for quite some time, and there’s no time like the present (and a really good sale and coupon combo at Michaels) to get us started. We have amassed a few frames and quite a bit of art over the years that are begging to be displayed on a frame wall (or “gallery wall” as some people call them). And we have a lot of framing to do, but we started with a sentimental gem from our early years together. Let us introduce you to the beginnings of the soon-to-be most boss wall in our house.
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