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?

Feeling box-y

I'm back! We have been busy organizing papers in the guest bedroom which doesn't make for very exciting posts and then our computer was acting up for most of this week. After EIGHT phone calls with Apple Care and an erase/restore, my husband has it up and running again! Our Time Capsule to back up files was worth every penny!

I have been searching for the perfect storage boxes to go on top of our bookshelves in the living room for several months now, and I finally found them! They needed to be pretty since they would be out in the open and fit in the space while adding as much space as possible. I also wanted lids to prevent layers of dust from coating everything inside.

Thanks to the Container Store, I now own six of these beauties, also known as Square Havana Storage Boxes!


They measure 12-1/4" sq. x 9-1/2" h, making them the perfect size for my bookshelves! At $19.99 each, they were a bit of a splurge for me. The $45 I had in gift cards definitely helped. Plus, compared to all of the other options I found, they were actually on the less expensive side.


Here are what the shelves looked like before my gorgeous boxes came home with me. The photo albums have relocated to our master closet, the legos are on are bedroom bookcase, and the bottles are now in the kitchen (post on that coming soon!)


Here are the bookshelves now! They look so much less cluttered on top but we can actually store more! It's a win-win! What are we storing in our new boxes? One holds instruction manuals (this freed up TONS of space in the file drawers), my husband and I each have one for random odds and ends, one is for little decorative items that aren't currently being used, and two are still empty for now. I decided to get two gray instead of all black because a) my Container Store only had 5 black and I needed 6 and b) since the shelves are black too the gray breaks things up and adds interest. The black and gray also go with my couch pillows. The tan color they come in also matches my pillows, but I thought black and tan would have a little too much contrast.


You may also notice I have some picture frames leaning in front of books. I did that temporarily to get them out of the way until hang them, but I actually like how they hide some books and make things less busy looking. I will probably make a photo wall over the futon at some point, but for now they look good here.

What is your favorite organization-related splurge? Do you use pretty storage boxes? I am totally in love with mine!

Livable living room

We successfully completed all of our goals for January!

January
Living room
Dining room
Hall closet

Our living room wound up being a place for things that didn't get put away or didn't have a designated spot to be put away...yikes!

Here's the embarrassing before picture.

Here's how we tackled the living room. I started off by grabbing the fleece blankets (ours and the kittys') and throwing them in the wash. Next, I put away the easy to put away items that already had a place to go. I moved the photo albums from under the coffee table to the top of my closet so that our baby doesn't mess them up once he starts crawling. I also put the few books that were under there on the bookshelves. I gathered up all the magazines too... I have a plan for them.

With the coffee table cleared off, I thought about what made sense to store under it. I decided to put all the blankets on the left side, rolled up. Blankets are one of the things that never had a designated spot before! Then the race track toy fit perfectly on the right side so it's not in the middle of the floor when it's not being played with. To the side of the coffee table we have a bin of baby toys and and a couple of larger toys. It will be so nice when he has his own room someday and his toys can go in there.

I also dusted the bookshelves and put away some smaller items that were sitting in front of the books. A part and tools to fix my husband's guitar got put in the guitar case, extra Lego pieces and small toy cars got put into a metal Cars lunch box. Various other items got moved to places that made more sense.

To finish off this room, I gave the futon the makeover explained in my previous post. Here's the completed room. I would still like to change up what is stored on top of the bookshelves, but for now I'm calling this one finished! Can you tell my husband likes books? All of the ones on these shelves are his except for my four college yearbooks.

All we will have to do to baby proof this room now is add L brackets to the bookshelves, add a couple of outlet covers, and put up the sword leaning in the corner. Once he's actually moving around we might rethink what is on the bottom shelves too. We can't have him ripping up all of my husband's car magazines!

Now it's time to keep the momentum going! February is almost here which means it's time to tackle our master bedroom and closet!

How do you store toys? I can't believe how many can be accumulated in just 6 months!

Futon makeover

When we got married, my husband contributed this futon, which was great since I didn't have a couch... only I never liked the way it looked. I've thought about buying a cover and pillows for it many times, but always abandoned the idea thinking I'd rather replace it than spend any money on it. But as we were fixing up the living room this month, I decided to go ahead and do something about it! New couch isn't exactly at the top of our want list so we will probably still have this futon for a while.


I started off by covering it with a black sheet we already had. Then I went to Hobby Lobby to pick out some fabrics for new pillows. The large dots were on clearance and the gray fabric was 30% off, score! After texting several options to my husband, these came out as the winners. He doesn't necessarily love them, but was okay with them. And I think they look pretty cute. I love that they are neutral so they will probably still work with whatever couch we end up with someday if we want to still use them.


The next step was deciding what size to make them and cutting out the squares. I decided on 15" square pillows, so I cut out 15.5" squares so that after I sewed them they would end up the size I wanted. I was especially careful when cutting out the large polka dot one to make sure the dots were straight and mostly centered. I actually traced out the squares using a ruler, triangle, and light colored thin sharpie. Then it was time to break out the sewing machine! I absolutely love this thing! It was from my grandpa's sewing machine store he had years ago. Old things really are better made than they are these days. So, I put the squares right sides together and sewed most of the way around, leaving an opening for stuffing.


Then I flipped them right-side out and stuffed them with Poly-Fil.


After stuffing them, I pinned them and sewed up the openings by hand. I bought new thread colors that closely matched the fabrics since these tiny stitches are on the outside.


Here are a couple of the finished pillows!


And here they all are on the made-over futon! I's not perfect looking, but I think it looks so much better and will hold us over until we get a pretty manly stylish couch! I also love that the removable sheet will make it easier to clean off cat hair. We have a small cat blanket that we usually leave on there that helps too. We can just pick that up when company comes over (or I when I want to take pretty blog pictures.)


Here's the project breakdown.
Supplies needed: sewing machine, fabric (about 2 yards for four pillows), thread, poly-fil stuffing, pins, scissors, ruler, sharpie or pen
Total cost: $26 for four pillows since I already a flat sheet, sewing machine and basic sewing supplies
Time spent: approx. 4 hours (1 hour at Hobby Lobby picking out fabric, 3 hours making the pillows)

Have you done any sewing projects or furniture makeovers lately to spruce up your home?

Decluttering and dinner

On Saturday we tackled the pile in the corner of our dining room. Several items that didn't have a place to go got stacked there "temporarily." Two boxes, the tool box, and a small suitcase. The kitties enjoyed using this stack of stuff as a jungle gym, as iMac is demonstrating in the photo below. But I did not enjoy looking at it so it was time for it to go!


The boxes had been there long enough that we couldn't even remember what was in the big gray tub. We started off with the cardboard box of VHS tapes. We don't even have a working VCR any more. So, it was time to get rid of most of them. Here are our stacks after we sorted them.


Pile 1: Movie my husband borrowed from friends years ago. He's going to call them and see if they even want it back.

Pile 2: Movies we have on DVD too, will buy on DVD, or don't want anymore.

Pile 3: Trash! These are tapes from back in the day when we recorded shows off of TV to watch later. It seems like forever ago, but it was as recent as three years ago. Now we love our DVR!

Pile 4: The keep pile. These are home movies or other sentimental videos.

So, we went from 40 VHS tapes to only 10! They fit on some shelves in our guest bedroom for now. They will probably move again once we tackle that room.

Next, we opened up the tub. It was full of books that we already for planning on selling to Half Price Books. I guess they never made it there!

The toolbox and suitcase will hopefully fit in a closet or the storage unit once we clean them out. They were temporarily (I mean it this time!) relocated to the guest bedroom.

We decided to make a trip to Half Price Books right away to get the books, VHS tapes, and DVD from our sort last week out of the house. We made a total of $16.60! It was enough to pay for our dinner at Chipotle with some change left over!


So we cleared out the corner of our dining room and made money! This might be my favorite project so far!

Time spent: 1 hour and 5 minutes (45 min. clearing out the corner, 20 minutes driving to and from Half Price Books)
Total cost: -$16.60! This was a money maker.

Do you have old books and movies lying around? I highly recommend showing them the door. You might even make some extra cash in the process.

A to Z DVDs

Off to the side of our dining room we have a nook with a bookshelf, two DVD shelves, and more DVDs than what fit on those two shelves! My husband loves movies.

Technically, it's a TV nook and it used to be our living room, but my black kitty, iMac, started chewing on cords so our TV was moved to the guest bedroom. Then we got a new dining room table and our furniture fit better when we switched our living room with our dining room. It's pretty much one big open space with the kitchen, so it doesn't look weird. Plus, I love having the table by the large windows now.

Back to the shelves... we removed a Kroger receipt from April 2011 (no idea how that got there), old The Far Side calendars (we have the two book set of every comic so they were redundant), and Dear John on DVD (lets just say there's a reason why we received it as a white elephant gift). Here are the shelves before. Notice the messy stacks on top? We also found some DVDs on the desk in our guest bedroom.


And here is the after! We put our TV show DVDs across the top of the bookshelf to make room for the movies on the DVD shelves. I was hoping to fit some DVDs on the top shelf, but they were just slightly too tall. Since there was room, I also added some of our baby's books that didn't have a place go go to the top shelf of the bookshelf. The Far Side books that were there previously got relocated to the bottom of the end table that used to hold our games. Now the DVDs are in alphabetical order with the exception of kids movies, car movies, and what my husband calls his Epic movies. It may not make the biggest difference in the room, but it definitely looks neater and will make it easier to find our movies!


We also have plans to make a list of all our movies to save as a note on our iPhones so that when we are out and about and see a movie we want to buy we can remember if we have it or not. My husband also plans to watch all of our movies in alphabetical order to decide if he wants to get rid of any (but I'm thinking more just for fun, ha ha). It will definitely make for some free date nights!

Do you have lots of movies? Do you sort them alphabetically, by genre, or not at all?