Just Call Me Wilma

Because I must live in the Stone Age.

I've gotten a couple emails about my reveal picture from the Under $15 Gallery Wall.  YES, we do have a land line.  And it's corded even.  I know.  You don't need to say it.  We originally got it when the cable company was offering a bundle price for TV, Internet, and phone and we figured we should get an answering machine for it.  But we're cheap so we got a corded one. 

Funny story though.  When we were looking for locations for our wedding I left the land line number as a contact because, I don't know why.  I guess because we'd just gotten it and I thought it should get used.  So weeks go by and we don't hear back from anyone.  What the?  I mean one or two locations not calling is understandable.  Ballrooms get busy.  But none of them?  Then we found out the land line came with a digital voicemail box.  Like a cell phone has.  And guess what?  EVERYONE had called us back.  Oops!  Turns out we didn't need an answering machine after all, but now we had one so we canceled the digital voicemail (it was an extra dollar a month) and were left with this monstrosity: 

We were going to cancel the land line when we moved, but they gave us another deal, so we kept it.  Plus, our house has a million phone jacks (at least one in every room, including the bathrooms and the master closet, which isn't even a walk-in) so we figured we could plug the phone in wherever and put the phone jacks to use.  We were wrong.  Turns out, none of the phone jacks work.  I lie.  The one in the master bath worked for a minute, but then it made our cable go out on our TV in the living room.  Stupid wiring.  So the only way to make the land line work is to have the phone plugged in directly to the modem.  Next to the TV.  It's really very attractive.  Jealous much?

Ring Around the Rosie...

Update: Giveaway Over

Have you heard of Pocket Full of Posies?  They offer an awesome sounding meal planning system (recipes and shopping list included) with adorable pockets like this:


Don't worry, they don't actually have pocket number's on them.
I just had to show you this one because it's my fav.



to stick on your fridge and keep your recipes for the week (or month) organized in.  Don't you just {heart} them?  Well hold on to your hat, because Ellie G over at Less Cake {more frosting} is having a Pocket Full of Posies giveaway!  Head over there right away for your chance to win and to read Ellie G's review of the Pocket Full of Posies system.  (She's always good for a laugh).  So get going already.  You definitely don't want to miss out on this!

Under $15 Gallery Wall

We're not really a "photos of ourselves kind of couple", which you're probably aware of if you've checked out the "about" page.  We have a couple frames we got as wedding gifts that we've been meaning to put wedding photos in (for the last 2 years) and once we're unpacked I'll probably actually do it, but that's about it.  Maybe our feelings will change once we have kids, but until then we've got a lot of blank wall space.

I was at a thrift store over the weekend and I saw they were having a frame sale.  All the frames you could fit in a box for $5.  Who could pass that up?  So I grabbed a box and filled it with frames.  I knew I was going to paint them all black, so I wasn't too picky about the condition or finish.  After 20 minutes of digging through frames, 10 frames and a cute little mirror got to come home with me.

Next I stopped by Jo-Ann Fabric and Dollar Tree to pick up a couple more supplies.  In all I ended up with:

~ 10 Frames & Mirror ($5)
~ 2 Sheets of Foam Board ($1 each at Dollar Tree)
~ 6 Sheets of Scrap Book Paper ($0.96)
~ 2 Sheets of Decorative Matting Paper for the bigger frames ($2.50 each)
~ Spray Adhesive
~ Krylon Black Gloss Spray Paint

I'm going to say up front that I should have taken more pictures along the way, but it was a pretty simple project, so I didn't think about it.  I promise I'll do better next time.  And I'm not sure where the camera is, so you guys are stuck with cell phone pictures.  Sorry.

First I took the backing and glass out of the frames that had them.  Then I painted all the frames with Krylon Black Gloss.  When they dried, I had this:

While I waited for the paint to dry, I cut the foam board down to the size of the frames using the removed glass as a template.  I should point out that since a couple of the frames didn't have any glass I traced those frames on the foam board before painting them so I would know what size to cut them down to.  I forgot to take a picture of this step, but you're smart so I trust you can imagine what a piece of foam board looks like.

Next I focused my attention on the paper.  Once again, I didn't take a picture of this step, but everyone's cut paper before right?  That's what I did.

I went out to the garage to check on the frames and while I was out there I adhered the paper to the foam board with some spray adhesive.  I also sprayed my hands (hmmm... there seems to be a pattern, maybe I shouldn't be allowed around aerosol cans), but I think the project will work just as well if you skip that step.  When the adhesive had dried (on my hands and the foam board), I had this: 

Then I popped the papered foam board back in to the frames:

By far the hardest part of this project was deciding on a layout.  I sat on the living room floor for at least an hour arranging and rearranging the frames until I found a layout I liked.  A hammer, a couple nails, and some poster tape to keep them from shifting and I was done.

Grrrr...that one went crooked on me, that's where the poster tape came in



Ignore the random crap on the shelf underneath.
We've just been setting stuff there as we unpack.


I'm so happy to finally have something up on the walls.  It makes the house feel lived.  And for less than $15, I certainly can't complain.   


 

I'm linking up to:

Christina's Adventures Giveaway

Update: Giveaway Over

Christina over at Christina's Adventures is having a giveaway in honor of her blog reaching 500 followers!  You could win some adorable stuff, so head over there right away!

I Swear I'm Not a Smurf

I just look like one today.

Image from smurf.com

I got a chance to start painting that filling cabinet (you know, the one I tried to paint Saturday) yesterday.  I say "start" because I ran out of paint before I was done, so I'll have to pick some up later.  While I still had paint, I learned a very important lesson.  Spray painting in the wind isn't the greatest idea.  I washed my hands like 20 times last night, but I guess the dish soap wasn't cutting it. We still haven't unpacked all of our cleaning supplies (mostly because I'm not sure where they all are) so we use dish soap to wash our hands.  Unfortunately, my hands still have a lovely blue speckling on them today.  Maybe it's because the dish soap is blue.  And I just noticed my wedding ring is speckled too.  Grrrrr.  Maybe I'm not supposed to mess with that filing cabinet.

What Was I Thinking?

It's April.  In Oregon.  Why would I think I'd be able to do a project outside?  We have a filling cabinet that I hate and finally decided to do something about.  It's metal, so I'm spraying it, but we don't have room in the garage right now.  I got a section of the deck guarded from spray paint and started to get the filing cabinet ready.  As I was taking the handles off, it started raining outside.  Bummer.

 
I guess I'll try again another day.

Do You See How Much I {Heart} Quatrefoil?

I was looking at someone's blog yesterday (I'm sorry whoever you are, I clicked on you through a blog, through another blog so I can't remember how I got to you to thank you for the idea, but if I ever find you again I'll make sure to update my post) and saw that her background was quatrefoil.  I just posted about {heart}ing it the other day, so I was super excited. 

Then I thought to myself How much do I really {heart} quatrefoil if I don't even have it in my blog design?  I made a decision.  I HAD to have a quatrefoil background.  I still wanted it to be in my current color scheme, so It's not like I could just find a quatrefoil pattern online somewhere and use that.  I'd have to make my own. 

WARNING: It was a really tedious process since the only artsy program I had available was Microsoft Publisher.  I'll show you how I did it, but you might want to come up with an easier way if you do it yourself.   

I started out by making a circle, then I copied it three times and put the circles together like this:

Now I had the basic shape I needed, but what about the outline?  I copied the shape, chose a lighter color and then enlarged it a little, so it looked like this:

Next I copied the entire shape and lined it up next to the original like this:

And then I copied them again:

And again, and again, and again.  Finally I added a square in the background that was the same color as my original circles and voila! Quatrefoil:

 This would have been the end point for most people, but I wanted a more delicate quatrefoil.  So I just kept copying bigger and bigger chunks of pattern until I finally settled with this:

To be honest, I would have made the pattern even small, but copying all those circles a million times really bogged down my computer.  So what do you think?  Do you {heart} it as much as I do?  Do you know of a better way I could have done it?  Let me know if there's a program online that would have made my life easier...