Splash of Color on the Gallery Wall - super cheap DIY

I have dreams of a beautiful gallery wall in our upstairs office/guest room. The room itself has slanted ceilings which is a bit of a decorating dilemma to begin with - but then you add in where I want the room to go and those ceilings don't matter one bit! Part of my Home To Do List included finishing up the gallery wall, which is just what I attempted to do the other day.

It was one of the easiest projects I've done in this house and I love the color it brings to the area! With gray walls, and all white frames, it was just screaming for a splash of color!

I've been collecting the frames on the wall since before we moved. I visit a thrift store that's next to a local grocery store when I see that their frames are 50% off and I snatch up whatever I think would look good size and shape wise. Then I bring them home and spray paint them Krylon's Bright White in a satin finish (I find my spray paint at WalMart) so they all match. I've been tossing them up on the wall until I find inspiration to fill them - and recently I found just that.

It was simple. It took 30 minutes, tops. I used a couple frames I already had (one was marked $1.50, the other was $0.50 - so with the 50% sales I shop, I'm pretty sure I paid a whole dollar for these two frames), and two magazines that I was about to toss. I also gathered a sheet of white scrapbook paper, ModPodge, a paintbrush, a glue pen, scissors, and glass cleaner.

I started by cleaning the glass for the frames to get all the fingerprints off. Then I ripped into the magazines looking for any bright colors or neat patterns. When I found something I liked, I traced a raindrop shape and cut it out. I repeated that over and over until I had about 30 raindrops to choose from. From there, I just arranged them on the pre-cut white scrapbook paper that fit in the frame. It took a little bit to find an arrangement I liked, but eventually I was ready to start gluing.

You can choose to use ModPodge or a glue pen - I started with ModPodge but switched to the glue pen just because it was faster and less messy. Anyway, you'll want to glue/ModPodge your raindrops to the paper and let them dry.

Once dry, you can choose to put another coat of ModPodge on top, or just pop them in frames to hang on the wall!

Wham, bam, done!

Cost breakdown:
Frames - $1 from a local thrift store during a 50% sale (you could always hit up the Dollar Tree for two frames for $2)
Scrapbook paper - already had, just took out of my stash
ModPodge - already had, just took out of my stash
Magazines - already had, thank you Ladies Home Journal for the free subscription!
Glue pen - already had, from DIY our wedding invites years ago
Glass cleaner - already had

Total cost: $1 for me, but if you needed a couple other supplies (glue pen, scrapbook paper, frames) it could cost around $3-$7 for two completed pieces of art. What a steal!

And of course, you can do this same project with any shape. I was going to circles (and use a scrapbook punch, which would have been even easier and quicker) and then I wanted to do snowflakes and then I settled on raindrops. Mix it up and try a different shape, if you want! I bet a polka dotted version would be super cute!

The Never Ending Honey-Do List

As promised in my post from last week, I'm here to share the short version of my to-do list around the house. While our new home is structurally sound, it leaves a lot to be desired in updated features. When we moved in, we were surrounded by honey oak: floors, trim, doors, cabinets, even the walls were a honey color. We're slowly making progress a little bit at a time (read: what I can accomplish during a Saturday afternoon) but I still feel like I need a list that can hold me accountable to the updates I want to make and make me feel good when I cross things off. I'll be using this as my master list and I'll link you to any projects that I've finished!

I'd love to have all of this done in the next six months... and then work on saving our bones for residing the house (it's currently a magnificent MINT GREEN), eventually gutting the main bathroom, and buying new living room furniture. Six months might be a stretch, but I'm not one of those people who like to leave projects unfinished so hopefully if I can get a good start on some of these, we'll be good.

So, here goes nothin'!

Upstairs:
Photo wall up the stairs
Put up curtain rods
Paint curtain rods
Cut curtains
Hem curtains

Fill gallery wall frames

Hallway:

Paint hall ceiling

Paint hallway walls
Refinish hardwood floors
Buy and install quarter round

Buy new light

Install new light

Hang art

Bedroom:
Put up curtain rods
Paint curtain rods
Cut curtains
Hem curtains
Paint trim in bedroom
Refinish hardwood floors
Buy and install quarter round

Downstairs guest room:
Paint trim
Paint walls
Put up curtain rods
Paint curtain rods
Cut curtains
Hem curtains
Refinish hardwood floors
Buy and install quarter round

Kitchen:

Stain kitchen cabinets
Board and batten wall

New countertops

Paint walls

Buy new light

Install new light

Living room:

Paint trim in living room

Patch living room ceiling

Paint living room walls
Put up curtain rods
Paint curtain rods
Cut curtains
Hem curtains
Refinish hardwood floors
Buy and install quarter round

Dining room:

New windows in dining room
Put up curtain rods
Paint curtain rods
Cut curtains
Hem curtains

Bathroom:

Paint bathroom walls

Peel and stick tiles in bathroom (for short term use)
Stain bathroom mirror

Two floating shelves above toilet

Side entry:

Paint trim

Paint ceiling

Paint walls

Paint steps

Install new light

Am I a glutton asking for punishment by trying to do all of this in a small amount of time? Only time will tell!

Welcome to 2014

Hey there and happy new year! It's been a little over 2 months since I last checked in because nursing school is keeping me so busy. By the time I'm done with my 12 hours of studying for the day, the last thing I want to do is type out a blog post... plus, my life doesn't change much day-to-day. Boring!

I realize I haven't shared any photos of our new house so I'll make a point to do so in the future. However, I have a few pictures I can share today that show the intermediate steps of our home improvement projects so you'll get a little peek into the money-pit we call home!

Just recently, Trevor and I adopted a 4 year old pup from our local humane association - we named her Maggie. She's as sweet as pie and is the perfect dog for us. Talk about unexpected, though! We just went to put in a general application to be approved for future adoptions and saw her sweet face. We met her and had submitted an application to take her home before we left. The day after Christmas, they called and told her she was all ours! She's from Mississippi and is slowly adjusting to the -30 degree windchill days we have around this time of year but her favorite thing to do is to cuddle with us under a heating blanket. We are so blessed to have a happy, healthy pup like Maggie!

We've also been staying busy with fixing things around the house. Before we even bought the house, we knew that we'd need to work on some landscaping before winter hit because the soil around our house was sloping towards the foundation which was basically sending the water down the footings and making our sump pumps (yes, two!) work overtime. We had about 5 different basement people look at the house while we were in escrow to make sure it wasn't an expensive issue... and thank goodness it wasn't: all we had to do was hire a landscaping company to come take out our walkways, truck in two dump trucks full of soil, spread it out, and regrade everything so the water flows away from our house. After being stood up by a company earlier this fall, we found a local place that agreed to do the work within our budget if we would take out the walkways. So we rented a jackhammer (uh, yeah, check that off the bucket list!).

And then found out that 1) our neighbors are incredibly tolerant of jackhammering noise. Nobody complained, not once! and 2) idiots lived here some time before us and decided it would be really cool to layer concrete over concrete over concrete. This meant, there were areas of the jackhammer project that required us to get through over a foot of concrete - which we had to do in layers. It's funny to think about now but it was FAR from hilarious when it happened.

We've also done a lot of painting around here! We painted our bedroom less than a week after we moved in (because Trevor wasn't enjoying sleeping in a pink bedroom) and I've been slowly - SLOWLY - working on painting all of the trim in the house white since then. Here's a look at our bedroom with grey-blue walls and white trim...

...and the built-ins in the hallway.

During Christmas break, I had a chance to sit back and gather my thoughts about where I want this house to go, updates wise, and I made out a "short" list that I'll be sharing with you soon. It's the list of things I'd like to get done in the next six months, which makes me believe that I am crazy. You'll understand when you see just how long the list is!

School starts up again this Sunday, the 5th and our clinicals start on the 7th. I'm really excited to get back into the hospital and work with patients but I'm also incredibly nervous that I'll be partly responsible for the care of my patients in a capacity I've never had before. Butterflies in my tummy doesn't even begin to describe it!

At the same time, I'm also so excited to see my nursing school friends again! We've all only met in person once - during orientation last September - but we've been working so closely online through discussions, projects, readings, and exams that I feel so much closer to these 29 people than I do to some of my friends who are local! Some of my classmates are arriving on Saturday, some on Monday, and we have a couple of dinners already planned for us to just catch up on life. It's corny, but these people have kept me going through the content that I couldn't wrap my head around (hello, nephrons and acid/base balances!) so it's going to be great seeing them all in person again.

Christmas and New Years were pretty low-key around these parts, so I don't have much to share... however, I want to know how yours went! Did you get to spend time with family from far away? Did you get some great gifts? Did you fall asleep before midnight like we did?

I'm not apologizing for being so absent the past couple of months because I am working so hard at school getting to a point of reaching my dream, but I am letting you know that I've thought about this little blog and all of you, my readers, often during my break. I can't promise that you'll be seeing a lot more of me around here, but I can promise that if you follow me on Instagram @YouAndMeAreWe that you'll get more real-time updates and none of this two-month-catch-up stuff! I'm notorious for sharing pictures of house projects, school stuff, and sleeping dogs - come join me!