From Pinterest to Real Life - The Collage Wall

Pinterest...
I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest.
I love/hate finding good things that waste my time because I'm already soooo good at wasting my own time. I also love/hate finding so many good things that I get overwhelmed thinking about the awesome potential of it all. And then I do...nothing.
See... that's why I love/hate Pinterest, and that's why I resisted joining up for so long. So I'm determined to only (mostly) pin things that I will actually (might actually in the future) do. And today I'm celebrating something I actually did! Yea ME!

THE COLLAGE WALL

I'm a photo addict. I love taking pictures and having pictures taken. I like displaying them, and fortunately in our new house we have HUGE walls and TONS of wall space. So I decided to do a collage wall.
Now note, I had done a collage wall in our old house, and I liked how it turned out, but I didn't love it. It never quite looked right. So I went to Pinterest and looked for some help in this area. I found this...

Source: thelittleblackdoor.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I found all of the pictures in the boxes that we had that had silver frames and collected them all together. There were 15. I traced them all out on an old roll of wrapping paper.



I also labeled what picture I had traced, and I marked where the hangers were on the frame...you'll see why in a minute.



And then I cut them all out. It was tedious, and I wondered if it was worth the hard work...but I pressed on. I initially arranged all of the paper cut outs on the floor. It was a little easier for me to move them around and play with them like puzzle pieces.



Then I used my handy blue painters tape and bullet level and started taping them to the walls.



I kept putting up my little squares on the wall until I had this



Then I had my Main Squeeze come in and start drilling screws and hanging pictures. I totally could have done this myself, but he's so good at it, and it went very fast. It would have taken me 2 or 3 times as long.  Remember where I marked the hangers on the paper? He just put the screw in the wall through the paper, then ripped the paper off the wall. We did a little measuring and leveling at this point just to make sure it looked the way we wanted it to.



When we finished, it looked like this....



A couple lessons from this project...
*If you're a perfectionist, this project will drive you crazy. It's hard to take a 3D object like a frame and transfer it to a 2D piece of paper then cut it out perfectly and hang it level. If you look closely, my results are not perfect, but I think they're pretty great!
*Frames with table top stands are hard to hang on a flat wall. Your frame will not sit flat on the wall and will not look level. We destroyed several stands by ripping them off the back of the frame in this project. That was fun!
*Command strips by 3M are one of my favorite products. We had frames that just didn't want to hang right with the screws and hangers, so we'd cut a command strip and put it on the corner and it would help it stay.
*If you have old frames that aren't all the same color, use silver craft paint to make them all the same color. It saved me a ton of money.
*It does take a lot of time to trace, cut out, lay out and hang all the paper cut outs. But when it comes to the actual hanging, the time flies by. This day, my main squeeze and I had hung 29 pictures. Most of them by using this method. Once I got all the paper cut outs taped up, it took him an hour to hang the 29 pictures. Boosh.

Have you ever tried doing something like this? How did it turn out? Do you love or hate the process of hanging pictures?

Reverb 10 - Appreciate

December 14 – Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)

The thing that I've come to appreciate the most is not a thing - it's a person - my Main Squeeze. There are a hundred reasons I appreciate and love the mess outta him. He knows when I need help, and when I need to be left alone to do it myself. He has a great way of identifying when I need a few hours at Starbucks. He works his tail off. He always takes care of things around our house to make it look and feel nice. He is passionate about what he does. He's a big kid at heart. He loves God, his family and his church. He is fearless. He loves me unconditionally. He always wants to bring the best out in people.



Have I mentioned that he's incredibly handsome too???

But those things aren't what I appreciate the most about him....

The thing that I've come to appreciate the most about him this year is that he loves lavishly. If he's going to show love, it's gonna be big. He's a great gift giver. He'll listen to you and pick out something for you that you'll love. Last year for my birthday, he took me out to buy a new dress (we ended up buying 3), then to a fancy dinner, then to a broadway show at a local theater, then a night at a hotel. I didn't ask for that, but I loved every second of it.

It's not just about lavish gifts. He can tell when someone needs more of his time. Like tonight, he let #1 stay up late, and they put a lego set together. Sometimes, he'll just sit down at his mom's desk at church, just to talk to her. For Christmas, he took his mama to the Rockette's Christmas show. He remembered that when his mom was little she wanted to be a Rockette. She loved the show, but what she loved even more was getting to spend time with her son.

I realized just a few weeks ago, I want to be more like him in this area. It's not that I don't know when people need my attention and affection, I know. It's not that I can't come up with great gift ideas, because I can. I just tend to love stingily. I spend time when it's convenient for me. I try to spend as little money as possible on a gift. I do the smallest that I can, and then I convince myself it's good enough - better than nothing. It's stupid.

I feel it especially in December. We have 2 birthdays in December - my Main Squeeze's and #1's. They are quite close to Christmas day. I always find myself trying just to give one of the things I got for my Main Squeeze for Christmas for his birthday, and sometimes cringing when I do. Well, I didn't do it this year. I gave to him for his birthday the way he gives to me year round. It was big. I did the same thing for him for his Christmas stocking. Instead of getting little cheap things just to fill his stocking because I felt like I had to fill his stocking, I put something in it that I knew he'd love. I also tried to spend time helping him take care of things in "his world." He normally takes care of everything outside our house. This week, our Christmas lights were falling off our house because we had a wind storm. I knew he wasn't really ready to take them down, but they did look ridiculous. Normally, I'd just leave them and let him take care of them when he felt like it, but since I knew it was bothering him, I just started taking them down while he was working on some things in the garage. He joined in, and the whole job was done in a little more than an hour (did I mention our house won the neighborhood decorating contest?)

Those 3 things were inspired by him - 3 choices to show lavish love. It didn't really take much, but I knew they meant a lot. It made me feel good. I need to do it more.....thanks sweetie.