Floor To Ceiling

Lots of changes with the gallery wall as of yesterday. I have finished the original section. When we were going to hang the curtain (still might) I was going to turn the unused wall space into a hallway towards the living room proper. So, the "hallway" is complete.

This is the view from the kitchen into the living room. You can see all the frames lined up at the bottom. I'm not sure if I like the spacing yet or not. So we haven't started hanging them. I will actually have to clean each one, because they are now covered in cat hair   : /

To get all the extra frames we HAD :) to make another trip to Ikea. We also decided to spend the entire day thrifting. We stopped at 4 Goodwills and planned on hitting 2 Habitat ReStores but ran out of time. They all close so early.

My two favorite people came with me :)

Ikea's lighting section is probably my favorite. Total light envy. Gah... :)

So much spent and this is all we walked away with... :) :)


Back to the gallery wall.

I really like how it looks but I'm not sure about the spacing at the bottom.

There are so many more frames at the bottom. Specifically the last 2 rows. I want it all to be a tight fit but I'm not sure if I like it like this. They will be filled with kid friendly items. Story's favorite pictures and more of her art. Mainly because she will be the one looking at them the most.

I'm really excited about how it's all turning out. I can't wait to start hanging. What do you all think about the bottom rows? Think the spacing is fine? Or should I fix it?

Kitchen Update

Hey there! We've had a pretty good week over here. It's rained a lot, but I'm okay with that. My plants needed it.

JP and I tackled a couple small projects we had been wanting to take care of.  A few weeks ago Story and I took a trip to Ikea. We were able to pick up a lot of neat things for our house. One of those things would be the shelves for the kitchen wall.

I had asked JP a million times to hang them up for me. He stalled because I stalled on where to put them and how many shelves to put there. But we FINALLY figured out where to put them! JP did a great job. The shelves do not come with the brackets attached, so JP had to do that all by himself. He got it all done. And was even able to hang up a wine rack after the shelf was put up. (I forgot I had it....) I don't have any progress pictures. Didn't want to mess up his flow.

Here is the finished wall!

We love it. Every time I walk into the kitchen it makes me smile. I had been trying to collect things that I thought would look good up there. I haven't gotten very far though. I have plans for it :)

So, it will look better in the future.


While JP was working on the shelves I decided to hang up a few paintings. They are on the wall opposite the gallery wall and TV. We had originally planned on hanging up a curtain wall to create a separate area for Jordan to have his studio. We still might. We picked up the kit to hang the curtains. We'll see. But in the mean time I put up these paintings.

All three are Van Gogh. These are a few of my favorites of his. On the gallery wall I have three more. I really like the colors in all of them. And it has partially been the inspiration for the room colors. I wish you could see it better, but on the table is a great yellow vase that Dad and Diana gave us for our anniversary. I love it! It's so neat and unusual. I don't have any flowers to put in it yet, but I'm working on it :) We also have the branches. They were our centerpieces at the wedding. I would cover the house in them if I could.

Full view of the wall. There is just a little bit of space on either side of the windows. Not enough to really do anything. I know the curtains don't match. It's a work in progress. I'm also going to get different pillows. The ones we have now match the couch, and let me tell you, it's too many stripes. Makes me dizzy every time I look over there.

All of the rooms are still un-finished, but we have made progress. I am probably done with the kitchen for now. The only things left to do are decorating, and I can't don't want to rush it.

I printed off a few more pictures to put in the empty gallery wall frames. The wall is starting to become over whelming. I still need about 40, that's right, 40, more frames to finish the wall. And then I have to fill them all. I have about 3,000 pictures so I'm not worried about finding family photos to fill some. But I want there to be more. I have ideas, so we'll see how it all turns out. Maybe if I hang what I've got it will motivate me to start on another section.

So, this is what we have been up to here this week :)

Gallery Wall Short Tutorial

This is just a small tutorial on how I've gotten to where I am with the gallery wall

I started out by picking up several different sized and shaped black frames. I've gotten all of mine from Ikea, so far. I wanted them to all feel the same, without being the same. But I will get some different ones as fillers. More on that later.

I also plan on using the wooden "P" we got for our wedding. We also got a moss covered "P" for our anniversary that I might use for the wall. Or for the front door. (Not sure yet Rachel)

I wanted to see what it would all look like so I laid the frames that I had on the floor. I just put them in the places I thought they should go. No real pattern. I really like how it looks so far.

These frames will only take up about 1/3 of the wall. And all of the frames aren't filled yet.

When I figured out how they would go I started tracing the frames.

This is not newspaper, it's tissue paper. I would recommend not using this. But it's all I had. And I wanted to do it, now.

print via


After I ran out of tissue paper and newspaper I started taping them to the wall.

This is as far as I've gotten. I REALLY like the layout. Can't wait to get the actual frames up. You can see in certain areas that the spacing is a little off. I plan on filling it up with little random things we have.

I can't wait to finish this project. It's really going to bring the room together :)

Gallery Wall Pt: 2

I had a day off today. So naturally we went to Ikea. It was amazing! Gah, I love that place. I would live there. I see all the little houses they have made in the showroom and I get totally jealous. They make 350 feet look incredible. We have around 800 feet of crap! :) Not really (yes) So much inspiration!

Anyway...

I got dressed up to go. Of course I did. I spend 99% of my time in either work clothes or PJ-ish items. I hardly EVER get to put on something cute. So when I get the chance, I take it!

JP thinks I'm nuts. He had to talk me out of wearing high heeled boots. They would have looked great, but I would have been in tears by the time we made it back to the car. By the way, it was 88 here. I sweat the entire time. Totally worth it though.

Story wanted to get dressed up too. But she gets to wear cute stuff all the time. And will change her clothes 5 times a day.

This is what she came up with, finally. :)

It's a Moroccan dress that is too short. So she picked out black skinny jean tights. You can't tell in the picture but she has on black striped socks and pink Twinkle Toes shoes. Oh, and the Dora shades.

Diva for sure

We had a relatively nice trip. A few close call melt-downs. But fun times too.

It's just Iron Man Girl Story. No big :) :)

But........ The whole point of the trip was to get a few more frames for the gallery wall. Which we got, and some other neat stuff. 

It's a decent start. Majority of the frames are filled with stuff. 

This is how it will look on the wall.

Said wall

Like I said, majority are filled. I have ideas for the others. And plan on getting more frames. The wall will only be about 50% filled with these. The blue frames are going into Story's room and will be replaced with black frames. I just couldn't resist. 

I know a lot of the gallery walls out there are being done in white. But when I started buying frames for our wedding pictures I got black ones. I had already purchased 6 frames and didn't want to have to start from scratch. So our gallery wall will be in black. 

I can't wait to start hanging! But I will wait until I have all of the necessary supplies. (Like nails)

Until then I will hang up our curtain rods, along with the new panels we picked up today. I also hope to FINALLY hang the shelves up in the kitchen. (still waiting on the right screws)

It's progress! Very satisfied with how it's all coming together. Even if we don't live in a Ikea home :)

Glorious Washer

You might have noticed in the last post that we got a new washer in our kitchen.

Well, we did!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

It was an anniversary present from my In-Laws and JP's Grandmas.

We went to Sears to pick one out on the actual anniversary. We drive all the way there (which is actually far. We've been spoiled. Here is Matthews everything is right down the road.) and picked one out. But they were out of stock..... Of course..... So, we went home and was able to order the exact one online. And they delivered it 2 days later!

Here is the moving truck they brought it in. I was jumping up and down with excitement at this point.

Here it is! Newly installed!

It's the greatest thing ever. It even plays a little tune when the cycle is over.

This is some leftover fabric I had from the bathroom shelf redo. I just wanted to see what it would look like with all the yucky stuff covered up. And I think I like it better. But that's stuff to worry about another day. :) For now I just want to stare at it.

Whoa.... Look at those curves... What a beaut :) :) :)


* Special thanks again to:
BP, NCP, and the Grandmas 2 (as Story calls them) :) :)

Living Room Pt: 1

Not a whole lot has been happening over here. We just re-arranged the living room. No big... :) :) !!!!!!!!!!

Super excited to show all the progress we have made. Bear in mind, the room is NO WHERE near done. But I feel okay about showing it to you now :)

Without further ado, here is our living room.

We had thought about this floor plan for a long while. It worked out in our favor this time. Normally we'll just move things around until I'm either depressed or too tired to deal with it that night. Then JP will finish it up and it will stay like that for a few more months. But like I said, this time was different.

I really like how it turned out. We have the 2 areas instead of 3 like we were going for. We decided not to put up the curtain dividers for now. I really like how light and open the space feels.

There is one area that is still a bit weird.

I still plan on doing the gallery wall, but I think I'm going to have it continue past the TV, all the way to the bookcase that is in the corner. But I'm not sure what to do with the open space in the middle of the floor. Maybe a new chair?

This is a close up of the seating area. We are going to turn behind the couch into a storage area. I also plan on getting a few different pillows and more paneling for the curtains. We also have a different end table that we will use in the left hand corner.

Opposite the sitting area is the entertainment center. It's new :) I had planned on painting it gray, but now I'm not so sure. It's not quite big enough to hold all of our stuff. So I might just hold off on painting and start looking for something bigger. But it doesn't take up as much bulky room as our old one.

I really like how everything has turned out so far. I can't wait to get started on the gallery wall. I will keep you posted :) :)