Making Progress...

The other day I wrote this post about creating a picture wall above our sofa in our living room and doing some painting and making some window treatments.  Well, somewhere in between quitting diapers cold turkey with Aidan and searching for a new car for Adam, I managed to get some of that accomplished this weekend.   I really wanted to get all the frames on the wall before I decided if I was going to paint and I lost steam on making window treatments this weekend so maybe that will happen this week.   Here is what I have done so far...

I took quite a few pictures and not one really looks like it does in real life but I tried...

What I spent on frames:

The chunky silver one I bought at Hobby Lobby. It was originally $27 but every other week their frames go on sale so it was 50% off!

Same goes for the black frame below it.  It was $30, 50% off.  They were both open back frames, so I spent $16 on glass and backing.

The white frames I bought at Home Goods.  For those of you that live in Charlotte, they had tons of them in Blakeney. The three smaller ones were $4.99 each and the 4x6 in the center was $5.99. 

The black resin Fleur de lis looking thing was also 50% off of $15 at Hobby  Lobby.

I just barely spent less than $65 and I am really happy with the result.

I obviously decided not to buy the candle sconce from Pottery Barn.  It was way too expensive and I have enough candles going on here.

The chalkboard was a framed painting of a cheetah (maybe leopard) from my bedroom at our beach house.  I painted the frame with ivory craft paint and scraped away a couple of layers in some areas to make it look worn. I just ended up painting the chalkboard paint right on the glass.  I did three coats of the chalkboard paint.  I would recommend using a good quality paintbrush only because I didn't and there are lines on my board. No one else will notice but I do.

Instead of doing the FREE gallery wrapped canvas that was going to be close to $30 because of shipping, I just decided to have this black and white photo of Aidan blown up at Wolf Camera and it only cost me $8 (in large black frame in bottom right corner).  The other four frames have just a few random snapshots from our wedding and one picture of Aidan in his vintage fire truck.  

I think it will look even better when I paint the walls a new flat paint color and get my window treatments up.  Our living room is the only room we have not ever painted in our house. 

I wasn't really feeling the one word idea that I had originally come up with so I drew this tree, added the owl to entertain Aidan and drew our initials on the trunk like they are carved there. I think it turned out pretty cute.   Adam keeps calling it the Tree of Life.  He is mocking me in a loving way. Haha.

Holy hard project.  I thought doing Aidan's silhouette would be a breeze.  Yeah right.  Although once I figured out what I was doing I could now be considered a pro.  I did the original on a piece of notebook paper then traced it to this black card stock, cut it out and just used a glue stick to glue it to this blue piece of paper and cut it to fit in the frame!

This is my ledge with the mason jars.   I am definitely going to paint the shelf I am just not sure how yet. I already had it so it didn't cost me a thing.  The tall green mason jar is full of corks because I didn't want to attempt to light a candle way down in it.  The white rose I had hanging around the house from an old floral arrangement. I just snipped it close to the top and stuck it in that mason jar.  I also threw a few small votive holders on there.  I am happy with it.  My dream shelf was going to be a little bit to big for the area so I just stuck with this one.

Just a cute pic of Spike sleeping while I work.

You can find my pillow covers here, here and here.  The paisley ones I have never been able to find anywhere on their website. Do yourself a favor and if you have a Pottery Barn outlet near you, go there to buy throw pillow inserts. They are so much cheaper than in store/catalog/website.

The throw you see in this picture you can buy here.  We have two of them in ivory and we love them. I have had them for almost 5 years and they look and feel exactly the same as they did the day I bought them.

My mason jars I bought at our local grocery store (Charlotteans Harris Teeter) and the medium sized ones we were using as drinking glasses.  They come in a 12 pack and they are the wide mouth mason jars. The small fat ones I already had candles in outside. They come in a four pack. The tall green one was left over from a friend's wedding.

So there you have it. Now you can create this look at your own home if you want.  I will definitely update you when I start to work on window treatments.  Adam has informed me that the wall between our living room and dining room is scheduled to come out this week or next so I may be waiting to paint until then but I will post pictures of that as well when it happens. 

Happy Decorating and more importantly Happy Memorial Day!