Pictures, Pictures on the Wall

One project I had been wanting to tackle for a while is the art in our living room. Originally, we had a flower picture you can see in this post here. It was really too small to fill the space. For a Mother's Day and Father's Day gift, my parents gave us our framed family bluebonnet picture. I decided it would be the perfect centerpiece for a gallery wall.

 

I spent some time on Pinterest coming up with ideas of how to arrange a gallery wall that doesn't look too random. I decided using all black frames would help tie things together enough that I could use color pictures. I love the look of black and white photos in all white frames on a colored wall, but wanted to work with what I have. 

To plan my layout, I gathered the frames I wanted to use and then roughly traced them on tissue paper. Then I took my tissue paper patterns and taped them on the wall with masking tape. Painter's tape would probably work even better, but the masking tape didn't damage the walls since it was so temporary. I moved things around until I came up with this arrangement. I love it because it is balanced but not too symmetrical.

Since my patterns weren't exact, I used a piece of printer paper to make precise guides for determining where to put the nails in the wall. I put the paper on the back of each frame and lined it up with a top corner. Then I marked a hole where the hanger on the back was. This part was super easy, no measuring required!

Then I lined the corner of my paper up with the corner of the tissue paper pattern and taped it to the wall in its place. I used a ruler to double check the space between frames to keep that consistent on both sides. After that all I had to do was add a nail where I had marked the hole.

 

I repeated those steps until all the pictures I had were hung! I still need to find the white mattes I have somewhere to replace the maroon ones. I also need to buy three more 5" x 7" frames since I only have one. I am waiting to hang the one I do have in case I can't find the same one and need to buy all four to have them match.

I am really happy with the progress I made on our gallery wall! There are no more pictures leaning on the book shelf and the awkward empty space above the couch is now filled with memories.

Have you ever hung a gallery wall? Do you have any advice for making it a quick and easy process?

Bathroom Bliss Part 2

After our son was born, we had our mom's helping with laundry/putting things away, and we were too tired to put things back where they belong our selves, so our linen closet became organized by the "stuff things where they fit" method. I basically took everything out so I could put it back in with a plan. I also edited out what we put back in. We got rid of some things like our rusty old shower caddy that we haven't used since we moved in 3 years ago and expired medicines. By the time I was done, I had a brown paper grocery bag overflowing with trash.

The top shelf has less frequently used items like beach towels, extra crib sheets, nail polish, and a basket of hair accessories.

Below that, we have burp cloths, my "second bathroom drawer", a small basket with extra razor blades, a basket of medicine, and a basket of travel sized toiletries. The basket I refer to as my "second bathroom drawer" is a basket with a handle that I pull out while I am getting ready and then put back in the closet. It prevents a lot of items from cluttering up the counter. It holds things like my hairbrush, contact solution, and glasses case.

The third shelf down has some drawers that used to be below the sink where you couldn't even open the bottom one. They hold nail clippers, first aid items, and make up. The basket to the right of them holds extra items from packages that come with more than one. 

Then on the lower shelves we have towels, sheets, and cleaning supplies. I plan on putting a child proof door knob cover on this door once our son is opening doors on his own.

The sheets I have sorted in stacks by which bed they fit on. Towels are also sorted by size. I relocated the old towels we don't really use under the sink so that the ones we use fit in here. I still like to keep old towels around because they come in handy for cleaning up big messes.

The back of our bathroom door also needed a little help. We have these handy hooks from my college days, but too much stuff had accumulated there, including my Mary Kay travel bag I hadn't used since December. Now it holds just my winter and summer robes. I think the winter one was in the wash when I took this picture.

It was difficult to photograph under the sink, but it mainly holds less used items. I also tried to put baby safe items under there since it will be tricky to install child safety locks on all 4 cabinets due to the material they are made of and the fact that we are renters. So we have old towels and extra toilet paper under there, as well as our travel toiletry bags. There are no crazy chemicals or medicines for our son or cats to get into.

We have been doing a pretty good job of keeping our bathroom organized. Having things in places that make sense makes all the difference!

Do you have any tips for getting and/or keeping a bathroom organized? We would love to hear them!

Bathroom Bliss Part 1

Back in May, we completely reorganized our bathroom!

May
Master bathroom
Guest bathroom
Storage unit

Yes, I realize it is September now... I guess it took me a while to recover, ha ha. Deciding to stay in our current apartment for another year also slowed down or momentum for getting rid of junk before moving. Now that the "it's too hot to move" heat of summer will be leaving soon, we are hoping to create a new de-cluttering/organizing schedule and get it done!

First, I'm going to share a couple of ways we re-purposed items from our bathroom set we got for our wedding. We have a beachy/ palm tree theme going on in there.  This cute little umbrella toothbrush holder is great... only I have an electric toothbrush that doesn't fit in it and my husband doesn't like to leave his toothbrush sitting out. So, it's new job is makeup brush holder! I love how it keeps them handy and prevents excess makeup from building up in the drawer.

Our bathroom set also includes this cute little hammock soap dish... but we use liquid soap! Since my husband likes to remove his rings when he washes his hands, it became a ring hammock!

Making our bathroom more functional involved clearing off some of the items we had been storing on the counter, reorganizing our bathroom drawers, re-organizing all of the items under the sink and in the closet, getting rid of expired medicines and products, and putting away some of the stuff hanging on the back of the bathroom door. In other words, we did it all!

I had been wanting some kind of dividers to help our drawers stay in order, so I was excited when I found these plastic ones in the Dollar Spot at Target! My husband and I now each have one skinny one and one larger rectangle one. They are a huge help when it comes to keeping things in place, and I love the $2 price for all four. For my drawer, I mainly have makeup. I also store my toothpaste, floss, contact case, eye drops, and current favorite nail polishes in there.

The rest of my nail polishes and makeup were under the sink in boxes and not very easy to get to. I dug them all out and got rid of everything that was too old, dried up, or no longer my style. Then they were relocated to the linen closet for easier access!

Stay tuned for a post about what we did to get our closet and under the sink space organized coming soon.

Do you have any re-purposed items in your bathroom? Do you like things out where they are quick to grab or put away for a clutter-free space? Does your makeup collection still have old things like body glitter?!