My own hallway full monty.

Well.  Nice little neglected blog.  My bad...

In other news, I put together a photo wall!

Thanks to Young House Love, I got all excited to put together my own little hallway.  My problem?  Where to put said hallway.

I could have put it in the basement, but the basement doesn't get a whole lot of face time when people come here.  Plus, it's kinda dark and, you know, in the basement.  Oh, and the little matter of the fact that the hallway leads to the utility room.  Also known as the Cat Room - that's where we keep the cat boxes.  Sooooo...maybe not exactly where I want to direct traffic.  :)  So, upstairs it went.  That hallway is a lot smaller and tighter, but it's a good place to pop a bunch of pictures and other fun items.

So, there you have it.  Now, some pics.

Here's the whole thing laid out on the hall floor.  Note the glorious tiles in the doorway.  Courtesy of the wonderdog when he was a pup.  Stupid wonderdog.

Here's another angle of it.  Not all the frames have the final pics in them.  Can you guess which ones?  :)

Who doesn't like a good progress shot?  I know I do.

Aaaaaaaand another.

And a couple of gratuitous "all done" shots!

Just one little story - these squirrels were painted on our car when we were married.  Back in the day, hubby's roommate named a squirrel that lived in their attic after him.  No, I don't know why.  All I know is that the little car paintings are stinkin' cute.  PS - those are hands, not boobs...

Wait, what's that?  Some TP art?!  Yeah.  You know it.  Also, note the mess in the bedroom behind it all.  This would be the carnage of pulling out all the picture frames and piling everything onto the bed while I find the right frames and the right places for them all.

Oh, and so the other side of the hall doesn't feel lonely, here's what that side looks like.  Not sure that I'll ever actually put anything on those walls other than the CB2 bud vases that are on there right now.  The thermostat and all that on the other side really distracts...

So, there you have it!  My own little version of the picture hallway I someday hope to have - like the Petersiks'.  Someday.

Up next:  finding the right bathroom mirror?

I like this.

Found it in the Real Simple mag for this month.  Just a one-page ad that caught my attention.

Excuse the slight fuzziness - it was a small pic.

There's just something about the casual "here's some stuff that I like" feeling of the two boards and the three hanging pics.  I like the rustic look of the wall behind it - very beach cottage.  That's not something that normally catches my eye, but I like it here.  I've been sort of thinking about how I can work in a wooden wall into our house.  One of my fave bloggers, Katie from Bower Power put a wood wall in her little boy's nursury, and I love it.  The rustic, masculine feel of it is just wonderful.  There's something comforting about the simplicity and beauty of it.

I like the idea of some kind of a wall like that somewhere in mi casa.  Probably not this casa, but maybe in the "forever home" of the future?

I like that both of the pics have this great rustic wall.  TOTALLY different kinds of rustic walls, but both really comfortable.  There's something about both of them that make me want to wear a lot of white linen and read books in the sunshine and breeze.  Kind of like living within an allergy medicine commercial.

That's about it.  Just a little sumpn' sumpn' that caught my eye.  Carry on.




Images from ballarddesigns.com and bowerpowerblog.com.

Finishing touches - painted walls!

While avoiding doing laundry, I've been looking through some of my favorite design blogs today.  I've found lots of inspirational pics.  Since we finished painting upstairs and in the family room, my mind has made the shift from "what color paint should we use" to "let's decorate these blank walls!"  I like this shift in mind-set.  :)  So, here are some things that I've found.

Things I love about this pic:  that big wall shelf system.  It's got a kind of mid-century mod thing happening - it looks like it could easily flow back in time to "Mad Men's" Pete Campbell's home.  We've got one big wall in the family room that needs something there, and a series of shelves like this could be it.  Or a combination of shelves and pictures, perhaps?

This dining room is just yummy.  Of course, it's probably because I'm a fan of all things clear acrylic and dark wood.  But I really like it for the airiness of the room.  It evokes a feeling of calm and openness.  This is a room that I can imagine having brunches with the family or reading a book over a cup of coffee - all in my sweats.  It's comfortable and friendly, yet with just the right amount of elegance to keep it from being totally casual.  I guess one could say that this is the feeling I'd love my whole house to look like.

This picture makes me appreciate the impact of a large piece of art in a large room.  While a really large piece of artwork isn't really what the basement space needs, we could easily work it into the decor of the living and dining room area.  We have a (roughly) 3'x4' canvas over the living room couch, but nothing for the large dining room wall.  I may have to look into the option of echoing that larger piece of art with another one on the opposite wall.  Stay tuned, I suppose!