More pallet art

I have a confession to make. Sometimes we do big house projects and I don't show you right away because they aren't "finished." And then I never show them to you because they're never finished. Case in point - our bedroom. We spent a weekend doing a bedroom makeover in January, and I still haven't shown it to you yet. Oops. We still need to add the finishing touches that really tie the room together - art, etc. - and we talked that a bit over the weekend.

I'm obsessed with the pallet art I made last fall, and ever since we found another pallet, I've been itching to make another one. Pinterest inspired me with things like this:

and this:

Zac made the pallet into a sign just like he did last time, and we went to work. I was planning to cut the letters from cardstock or contact paper, but my friend Clare caught me in time and cut them for me on her Cricuit. That saved me a ton of time. And made it look like this:

She cut the letters out on colored paper and we taped them to the pallet.

Our next step was to trace the letters with a pencil. Zac's more precise than I am, so he took care of this part.

Derby, meanwhile, was super helpful. But oh my goodness is he cute.

Tracing the letters turned into this...

which then turned into this.

We wanted a "rustic" look, so I used a paint brush to fill in the letters. I used a paint pen where I needed it, but for the most part I just used a brush.

Here's our finished product:

If we did it all over again, there are a few things I would do differently (like not use black paint), but overall, I'm happy with it.

Here it is in the overall room:

I really like the contrast between the silk curtains and the rustic art. What do you think? Fingers crossed that I'll show you the whole room over the next few days. We love it and I hope you will too!

Click HERE to see the blog parties where I'm linking!

A Happy Mother's Day Brunch

One of the best things about being finished with school is how much extra time I feel like I have. I'm sure it will fill up quickly, but for now, I feel like I just have extra hours in my day. And it's awesome.

Zac and I invited our families to our house for a Mother's Day Brunch. We live just about halfway between both of our parents, which is ideal for us. We love when everyone comes to our house. We don't have to travel, and I love entertaining.

We had so much fun planning this brunch, but it was a lot of work. I have a new appreciation for the graduation parties my mother threw us - which had about twenty times the amount of guests. We really wanted it to be special for our moms, so we spent a lot of time preparing.

Our menu was very Pinterest inspired, of course...

• Mini breakfast casseroles
• Mini coffee cakes - a recipe I can't give you because it's from my mom's good friend who doesn't want her to have it!
• Veggie tray
• Fruit kabobs
• Warm brie cups
• Salted white chocolate chip cookies
• Make your own fruit pizzas

I found navy blue and hot pink tablecloths at Homegoods, and I used that to set the theme for the brunch.

The drink station. We had bloody marys, mimosas, coffee, soda, and lemon water.

Check out the skewers on the fruit kabobs. I colored water with food coloring and soaked them for a few hours and voila! Hot pink to match the theme!

These mason jars belonged to my grandmother, who gave them to me last summer. I love them!! If you ever put flowers in a mason jar, use small carnations like these. They look perfect!

HOW CUTE ARE THESE?!? I made them using this pan.

I found these flower balloons on Pinterest. Do you like my take on them?

My pretty mom enjoying a mini fruit pizza.

My wonderful mother in law opening her presents.

Our moms loved their brunch, and we had a blast spending time with our families. Do you need proof of how hard we worked? This is what I found about 30 minutes after everyone had left:

A Spring Cleaning Guide for Normal People

Hopefully spring has been as lovely where you live as it has been in Cincinnati. February felt like the end of March, and March felt like April. All of this nice weather means our windows have been open a lot, and open windows always make me want to clean things. I don't mean dust (I'd rather do anything in the world besides dust!!). I mean deep cleaning - through things away - make your closet no longer a death trap cleaning. I'm not sure why... maybe it's just the smell of fresh air?

When we first moved into this house, my mom bought me this book:

                                    

Does anyone else have it? I'll give it a so-so review. There is a lot of good information, but I'm also more likely to google than to open this bad boy (in all 744 pages of its glory). My mom, who has a spotless house every day, all the time, didn't find too much use for it, but that's probably just because she could have written it.

There are some pros to it though, and my favorite part is Martha's suggested cleaning schedule. Some of them are a bit "Marth-y" ("Rotate the books in your library to prevent warping and sun damage"), but most if it is legit.

To prevent you from having to read a 744 page book about Martha Stewart, I've created a spring cleaning checklist. You can download it as a printable by going here. Since spring cleaning is about the only cleaning I can get excited about, I like to harness that positive energy into a sparkling, less stuff, oasis. Or a version of my home that is slightly better than what it was a month before. I have realistic expectations.

Here's a preview:

There are some things I include on this list that Martha wants me to do more often (wash pillows), but girl, I'm busy. I do the best I can.

If you are more like Martha than me, you might need to follow some of her other suggestions and clean down your ovenS, replace your heavy drapes and rugs with lightweight ones (WHO DOES THIS??), reseal your stone surfaces, and polish your metal door. Oh Martha. It's so cute that we pretend that you do any of this at any of your homeS. We know you have people.

Do you spring clean? Is there anything I left off of my list?

Click HERE to see the blog parties where I'm linking!

Picture Wall Close Ups

Yesterday I promised you close ups of some of my favorite things on our picture wall. This wall is a mix of things, but I do have a few that I just love the most. Let me warn you now that I take terrible pictures normally, but pictures of pictures taken at night time are especially awful.

This is my very favorite shot from our Trash the Dress session, which gave it the prime spot on the picture wall. This is a bridge that usually has cars on it, so we had a lookout at either end and did this shot quickly!! The wind blowing my dress is my favorite part!

This is one of the very first pictures we ever took together, and it makes me smile!

Oh, I love everything about this. The day of our wedding it downpoured. I mean, rained cats and dogs. Rained so so hard. We had to take pictures inside at a Conservatory, and there was a woman there sketching. She walked up to my sister and handed her this -- it's me! Isn't it amazing??

Just when I think the last one was my favorite. This is a picture of Zac's grandfather taken more than 50 years ago. My favorite part? How much it looks like Zac! We've had three friends ask what Zac was eating in this picture -- I love how they resemble each other so much!

This is my grandmother and her brother when they were younger. Isn't the reflection so neat? When you're looking at it in person, it's really difficult to tell which side is right side up.

So there you go -- a close up of our picture wall. Is there anything you display that you love that I haven't thought of yet??

Picture Wall Re-Do

Our family room was one of the first rooms we decorated when we moved in. There were some things (like buying a couch) that just couldn't be avoided unless we wanted to sit on the floor.

I love this room. It's where we spend most of our time, and I really do think it's comfortable. There are a lot of bright colors (the pillows, the rug, and the pallet art), but the neutral walls and television cabinet provide balance.

There's only one part of this room that's always felt a bit off to me, and that is the picture wall. We had envisioned a wall of photos that wrapped around our sectional similar to the way the couch wraps around the wall. But, and I'm not completely sure why, we just never accomplished that goal.

Here's what I'm talking about:

As a side note, we paid $8.99 for the lamp hanging over the couch at IKEA. It's the best lamp ever.

Do you see what I mean about the picture wall? We thought that the mix of frame colors would be awesome, but it wasn't. We thought this would be the punch of color the room needed, but it wasn't. We thought this would be a lot of pictures and make the wall feel full, but it didn't.

We went to IKEA to get some more frames. We went like fools and didn't measure or count out how many or anything. We just bought a bunch of different sizes and got SUPER lucky. We were short two small frames, but that was it.

The next step was to create newspaper templates of all of the frames. This didn't take very long at all, and it was well worth the effort.

Hey there, pre-Christmas advertisements.

I know some people lay out their frames on the floor, but that doesn't work for me. Fun fact you probably didn't know - I am terrible at visualizing things (which is probably why I struggle so much when I'm sewing patterns). This helps me get a better idea of the actual layout.

Looks easy, right? WRONG. Fast forward SEVEN HOURS LATER, and we finally got to this point:

This process was exhausting. We started with the large frame, and worked out. We didn't want the frames to be completely symmetrical, but we also didn't want them to be too wonky, either. We initially wanted the whole thing to be a large rectangle, but ultimately we had to give up and allow the bottoms to be staggered. I'm really glad we did this -- it's one of my favorite parts about it now!

We pulled some pictures from the old picture wall, ordered some new ones, and found some other frame-able things laying around.

Together, they make magic!

Side note about the naked lady? I bought her at a farmer's market in Seattle. I brought it home and showed it proudly to Zac. He said, "You bought a naked lady?" and I said, "What naked lady? I don't see a naked lady?" He turned it right side up. And I said, "Ohhhhh...." And I took these pictures before putting in the last two pictures. Oops.

We are thrilled with the results. I think the change to all black frames (so they pop on the white walls), putting them closer together, and adding more frames solved our earlier problems. The wall adds a lot of color to the room, and also lets us display some of our favorite pictures and memories.

Hope you like it, too! Tomorrow I'll share close-ups of some of my favorite pictures, but in the meantime, click HERE to see the blog parties where I'm linking!

And just for fun, a blog picture outtake...