Gallery Wall on the Cheap

Just a quick post with a quick explanation of a project I recently did.
I love the look of gallery walls. My Pinterest boards are filled with them.

Young House Love

Stiesthoughts.com

And my own gallery wall in our hallway.

And with all of the great pictures we have of Cai and the family photos that Kristen Fuest Photography did for us a few months ago, I was looking for a way to display them. But money is tight, and picture frames are expensive, as are prints. So, I had to find a way to do things inexpensively.

I started by ordering prints from Shutterfly.com. I also subscribe to the app Groovebook which is an awesome way to keep up with photo prints, so I used some of those. I then picked out some frames at The Dollar Tree.  I spent $15.00 there. I couldn't find fifteen matching frames, but I made sure that all of the frames of a certain size matched each other. I wanted white frames against our gray wall, so I painted them with some acrylic paint. 

Arranging them was harder than I expected. I though I wanted the look of a random arrangement, but I couldn't get it to look "random" and organized at the same time. The diamond arrangement sort of evolved when I was playing around, and that's what I went with. I mounted them with 3m Command Strips which I think work bests for this sort of thing. With nails and picture hangers, the frame can end up hanging a little differently than you expected, but the strips (although a little bit more pricey) are easy to get in the exact position you want them. 

So, nothing amazing here, but it was a nice way to showcase our family photos and our little Cai without spending a ton of money. 

Wood Stove: Before and After

Another change I've been meaning to show on the blog is the wood stove and chimney. 

This is what the wood stove looked like when we moved in and the house still belonged to my grandparents. Oma's style is very...Oma-ish, haha. The walls were cream, the border was floral, and, well, there was a lot of stuff. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the black parts of the stove were turning red.

Then we moved in and painted the wall gray and the chimney red. This was also before we put in out entertainment center. Shortly after this I painted the black areas of the stove with black stove paint (Did you know there's such a think as stove paint? I didn't; my dad had some).

And this is what it looks like now. You can see how much darker the stove is (except that one red strip at the top that I missed). Most recently, I painted the chimney that dark gray, and I am so much happier with it. We liked the red when we did it because we had red, teal, and mustard accents in the room, but I've slowly been cutting back the colors until it is now just gray with teal accents. I love the way the zinnias pop against the dark background. It's harder to see in the photo, but our family picture pops nicely too. Eventually we want to pain all of the trim white to match the trim around the door to the dining room. I'm actually super pleased with our living room right now, even with toys all over it. Again, small changes over the past four years have made a big difference.

Kitchen: Before and After

I have about a billion blog posts I want to write, and never seem to be able to actually do them. It's not that I don't have time, I just don't have time and the ability to focus at the same time, I guess.
Plus, someone likes to wait until he sees me on my laptop then come over and touch everything that he knows he's not supposed to touch (and I have a touch screen laptop).

But, I thought I'd write this one right now before I have time to forget it or do something else (also my house is moderately clean right now, so I don't have to feel guilty about typing instead of cleaning...except for the four baskets full of clean laundry that need to be folded and put away :/ ).

I was looking at my Timehop app today, and came across some pictures of my kitchen four years ago on the day after we moved in...or rather moved up because we had already been living in the basement. I was shocked at how much the kitchen had changed. I mean, I know we did a ton of work on it, but it was all done a little at a time, so the change now seems so dramatic. The pictures clearly aren't professional grade, and my kitchen isn't perfectly clean, but you can still see the difference.

 

 We still want to change the counter tops, particularly the island (you can't see it in these pictures) which is still pink. I really want butcher block counter tops and maybe and under mount sink, but that's WAY down the road at this point. Almost all of the changes we've made so far have been relatively inexpensive. Obviously we painted. We also put the new backsplash up which is actually pvc laid over the old backsplash.

We bought the new cabinet hardware from Ikea and the new faucet from Home Depot. Most of the plates come from Target, Pier One, and my (and my mom's) cabinets. I covered the switchplates with scrapbook paper, and it's one of my favorite updates. I know that sounds silly, but it adds the pop of color I like. You can't tell in the picture, but the design is little kitchen appliances and utensils. I think the only other update is the dishwasher which we just recently bought. The one we had was ancient, and although it worked decently the springs had broken on the door and it very easily fell open if we didn't keep it locked. We thought we had fixed it, but then it fell open one day and missed Cai's head by about two inches. That's when Steve decided we needed a new one. And we were able to get one that had everything we needed and was deeply discounted! Also not pictured, we replaced the ceiling fan above the center island with a cheap light fixture from Walmart. We made the switch right before we listed the house on the market two years ago, and picked something that was modern but inexpensive (from Walmart). It's probably not exactly what I would have picked had I known we wouldn't be moving, but it's a major update from the fan (which we didn't really use).

I love that even though my kitchen isn't perfect, it's a bright and sunshiny place that I enjoy cooking in.

When I Grow Up...

When I grow up, I want to be like Olivia Walton. The Walton's is on the Hallmark Channel after school, and I've been watching it often. We always watched it growing up, but I never paid much attention to Olivia. Now that I'm watching the show as a married woman, I see in her what I'd like my future children to see in me; a godly woman who served her husband and her family. She was strong willed and had a temper, but she knew what Scripture meant when it called for wives to submit to their husbands. She lived out her faith by loving everyone who she met.

She was also an amazing homemaker. As we make plans to buy this house, I am constantly looking forward to making it our own. I am looking forward to cleaning! I know, crazy, right? I am looking forward to baking more, cooking more, crafting more. And if I could do it all in lovely, but practical dress, how much better would that be?!

Do I have any amazing friends who, if I bought a pattern like this, would be willing to make me some dresses for the summer like these? I'd buy the pattern and all the fabric? I'm crafty, but I can't use a sewing machine for my life. Anybody?