Well hello all! Can you believe it’s almost the weekend already? I swear this week has absolutely flown by.

I got one project completed this week that I’m really, really happy with. (GLEE!!) And I did most of it with what I had, which is always a bonus in my book. :)

When it comes to filling wall space, we don’t have much real art in our home. OK, let me rephrase…we have ZERO real art. :)

An outlet Ballard Designs piece is the closest we get to actual art. Instead I’ve fill our walls with a bunch of molding and lots and LOTS of pictures. Bunches. Gaggles. :)

Photographs are my very favorite art. They’re cheap (most of the time I print them out at home and almost all frames are from Goodwill), they’re easy, and they add a personal touch to our home that no art could.

I’ve grouped framed pictures in almost every room in our house. The playroom:

See that squishy face? That’s my baby:

The cowboy is my Dad as a boy. I could die. :)

That wall of photos is getting a redo soon. I may move the shelves around and am definitely adding new photos throughout.

I filled an empty wall on our stairwell with photos as well:

Don’t worry…the mice are gone. As much as I HEART them. :)

And I used photos in a wall in our bedroom as well:

You can see they’re usually hung willy nilly. I like the scattered look when it comes to framed photos, which is REALLY weird for me, since I’m the symmetrical queen.

When I started the impromptu redo of the living room, I knew exactly how I wanted to fill the space between the windows. I took at look at the colorway on the fabric I picked for the drapes for some color inspiration:

I big fat LOVE when they do that! It makes it so easy to work with. You’ll notice there’s 16 different colors in this beautiful fabric, which gave me plenty of options to choose from.

And it turns out, I already had exactly what I needed. :) About eight months ago, I started collecting frames at Goodwill for an idea I had for the living room. I even spray painted them months ago – I bet it’s been about six months.

But when I tried my idea in the room, I didn’t care for it (more about that later!) and left it sitting for months. And wouldn’t you know it – the colors I had already painted the frames worked perfectly for my new idea:

I love using what I have. And I love it even more when the spray painting is already done. ;)

I started finishing off this spot with a Goodwill lamp – it was blinding me with it’s brassiness at the store, but I knew it could be a beauty:

Doesn’t it have the loveliest curves? Oh, she’s so darn pretty. :) I sprayed it with a primer and then a couple coats of Rustoleum’s Heirloom White. I had the shade, and added a ribbon from my stash around the bottom. I love how the color in the ribbon is an exact match to the light brown in the drapes.

That is what I’m talkin’ about! Totally by accident and it worked great. Whooeee!!

I kept the accessories in the HomeGoods tray simple. I didn’t want them to compete with the art:

The rattan ball was a couple bucks on clearance at Pottery Barn years ago. The books are those faux books, and I covered them with a linen fabric last year.

The art is my very favorite part! They’re all shots I took (with my point and shoot camera by the way) last year:

I used a few of the wildflower shots (from our neighborhood) and a leaf from a hike last fall. I was going for bright colors that worked with the drapes. LOVE.

I don’t even use mats most of the time – I just cut out white paper and use spray adhesive or double-sided tape to mount the photos right on top. You can’t even tell they’re not the real thing!

Like I mentioned, I usually print my photos out at home (and usually just on basic printer paper), but this time I splurged a little bit. I uploaded them to Walgreens.com and picked them up an hour later.

Uhh, hello?? How have I missed this fabulousness all these years? I knew about it, just never did it. And I’m now hooked. I think the five pictures were about $12.

The new art is the perfect finishing touch for that part of the room:

I’m so in love with it. I smile every time I walk in this space.

There’s still much I want to do – not sure that mirror is staying on the right (it’s a little small). You’ll see a peek of a Goodwill coffee table that’s waiting for a redo. And there’s pillows to make as well. (I am going to attempt to make a pillow with a zipper people.)  ;)

And if you look close enough, you’ll notice the drapes are different lengths, still aren’t hemmed (will they ever be? I don’t know, I don’t know!), and there’s a few holes in the wall I need to paint over.

I was able cover most of those with the frames though. YESSSS.

Because you know I’m a lovah of before and after pics, let’s check out the difference so far, shall we? The dark before:

And with new drapes and a little reworking, the now:

BOO.yah. LOVE it.

I know many of you are loving the fabric as much as I am – I got it from Calico Corners and it’s P. Kaufman fabric:

I’m trying to find it online and haven’t come up with anything yet. I’ll let you know if I find a link!

So, do you use photos as art in your home? I know one thing – if we ever sell our house, the realtor is going to have a heyday with us. Aren’t you supposed to depersonalize? We’ll have LOTS of empty walls! Or they’ll just have to deal.  :)

P.S. The lamp shade on the side table was a vintage find years ago. Isn’t is perfect?

P.P.S. The spray paints/colors I used on the frames were Rustoleum’s Heirloom White and Espresso and Valspar’s Everglade.

**Adding this to my friend Melissa’s party:

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day my SQUEEZIES! :) Hope you had a great one.

I’ve been working on some changes in our living room over the last couple of weeks, and I’m nowhere near close to done, but I just couldn’t wait to show you! I am LOVING how it's turning out -- so excited.

I don’t know if it’s the three inches of ice that have finally melted off our driveway (for the first time in two weeks), or the warmer temps we’re getting this week that is giving us hope for spring, or maybe it’s because the cat peed on the drapes…any one of them could be the reason for my spur-of-the-moment decision to make some changes to our front room.

What’s that? Hmmmm? Oh yeah…I skipped over the pee cat thing. She was off her meds for two long and the inevitable happened. This time though…I’m GLAD. Because that’s actually what started this ball rolling. See – pee cats are good for something! (And she’s really sweet and loving and yada yada…)

Anyhoo, enough mentions of pee for one post. Onward! It started when I took a drape down to wash it, and it just spiraled out of control from there.

For the past year or so, I’ve been trying to add more color to our living room. It looked like this back in the day:

OK, well there’s been color – it’s just been one color. Red. :)

And then I made a few more changes and it looked like this for quite some time:

Notice the trend? DARK. A ton of dark peices and accessories, and red fabrics – ONLY red. You see, for the longest time I thought our wall color was hard to work with. It’s called Beechwood Grey from Porter, and I like it – but for a long time I just felt like I needed to match it, you know?

So red was the direction I went…and I liked it for a while. But my style…it is a changin’.  :)

And taking that one drape down kind of got my wheels turning. I noticed how much brighter it got in the room with just the one panel down. So I took another down…and another…and you get the picture.

The front of our house doesn’t get direct sunlight, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell – the room was positively glowing. And I was in luuurve.

That’s what started the ball started rolling – and the wheels in my head churning. First up was to trim out the windows like I showed you here. I’ve slowly but surely done this around the house, and I’m about half way through the windows now.

And then, since I was going to paint the sills and everything around the window, I went ahead and recaulked both of them:

I didn’t even keep it clean and pretty, because I knew I was painting over it all in white.

And that I did – the new trim and drywall around the windows was painted out in glossy white. See how this started with a little bitty thing and got HUGE? :)

Then another idea came to mind. I love love LOVE my free sewing cabinet and Ballard-esque cafe shelves between the windows, but they have seemed so HEAVY to me lately:

(The iron snowflakes hanging in the windows that I tried to convince myself didn’t look like snowflakes have been gone for a while. They are now packed away in the Christmas decor. Cause they are snowflakes.)

Anyway…I’ve always felt like I needed something more substantial between those windows.

So I took it all away:

(I had just wiped down the wall – hence the dark marks.)

I contemplated leaving those windows nekked by the way, just like in our kitchen. I was smitten, I tell you. 

But then…then, I found THIS:

I was perusing Calico Corners last week (I hadn’t been to the fabric store in forEVER), saw this and couldn’t get it out of my head. It had COLOR – so many beautiful colors. And I just thought the print was stunning.

I couldn’t resist it. And I’m so glad I didn’t. Cause now that dark room looks like this:

Now, I’m showing you in between pics here – keep that in mind. I like to show the process of things so I really wanted to show you the progress thus far.

I think it’s a dramatic change, yes?:

That dresser has made the rounds around our house. It was the Bub’s changing table forever, then it moved to the office, and then it was in the basement for a while.

I made hubs drag it up the stairs to see if it would work and I fell. in. love.

Do you see how differently the wall color photographs? It drives me a little batty. It’s looking way pink in these pics, when it really has more of a greyish tint like in the nekked window picture above.

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t use this as a formal living room – we use it constantly. So the dresser is going to be fantastic storage for puzzles and other activities we do out there:

I have a Goodwill lamp that’s almost ready for the left up on top there. The beautiful wood crate? HomeGoods baby! (For $16!) Doesn’t it looked like I plucked it out of an antique store? LOVE that color too.

One of the things I’d love to do, especially now, is to get a slipcover made for the chair and sofa:

But even without covers, I love them SO MUCH MORE in this room now. It’s just crazy – I don’t know why, but they don’t bother me nearly as much. (But I AM going to slipcover. Oh yes…I am.)

I have a plan for the wall above the dresser too – I already have everything I’ll need. Can’t wait to get it up there!:

And yes, there ARE about 50 holes in that wall from the various changes I’ve made to it. :) They’ll all be covered with my plan. I’m not even gonna fill them. Buwahahaha!!!  :)

I’m hoping to get the rest of the changes made to this part of the room by the end of this week, so I’ll show you as soon as I’m done. There’s some other stuff I’m working on elsewhere in the space too, but that is going to take a bit longer.

But for now…I simple cannot believe the difference a little editing and new drapes made…the before:

And after:

WHOO, swoon, ACK…Happy Valentine’s Day to ME…I am love! Ha! :)

Can’t wait to show you the rest! So far it’s turning out just like it looked in my head…just hope the rest of it does. (I love when that happens!)

P.S. I have not even hemmed the drapes yet…that’s how not completed this room is. Did I mention I have little to no patience?? :)

Like my version of the Ballard Designs cafe shelves?
You’ll LOVE Knock Off Decor!

Often I think it’s the little things that make a big difference when decorating – or maybe I should say little splurges. :) Things like decorative pulls and light switch covers make me smile. But they aren’t cheap, and they certainly aren’t a necessity, so I add them as I can.

One of my favorite little details are pretty knobs. You can absolutely transform the look of a piece of furniture with just new hardware. So reeehealy, when you compare buying new furniture to buying a few new knobs, that’s not really a BIG splurge, eh Dave Ramsey? Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

I showed you the fab selection of knobs and handles at my local True Value:

Excuse me while I wipe the drool…

Recently I was on a mission to find just the right knobs for my Craigslist buffet in the foyer:

I found the most beauteous glass knobs at True Value and they made a HUGE difference on this piece:

Ohhh, aren’t they lovely? It’s all like PAAAADOW…I’m all glassy and crystally and shiny and you can’t take your eyes off me, gorgeous!

All that glitter for five bucks each. Whoooohoo!

One thing to watch for when you change out hardware is how the finish looks underneath. Sometimes if knobs are installed too tightly, they will damage the wood.

The person who painted my buffet (before I bought it) put the knobs on before the paint had cured. So they were practically glued to the drawers. (I had to take a hammer to a few of them!!)

I still need to touch up the paint around some of the new knobs because of that:

The brass hardware on my other recent Craigslist purchase is actually quite beautiful:

Yes, you heard me right. I just said brass was PRETTY. It’s the antique looking brass though, not the blinding shiny stuff. :)

I found some brass polish at True Value and went after these beauties with an old tooth brush:

The old finish is on the left, the cleaned finish is on the right:

Loverly! Not all of them cleaned up that well, but I’m just chalking it all up to the beauty of an old piece.

Obviously, I’ve had a bit of a Craigslist dresser obsession lately.  :) A few weeks ago I picked up a Henredon dresser for our bedroom for only 50 smackaroos (AWWWWESOME!! I’ll show you soon!), so I was moving dressers around all over the house. The old dresser in our bedroom moved to the guest room, and the one in the guest room had no home.

It’s the one from the Bub’s nursery, and it’s just lovely:

Sniff. Sigh. Boohoo…I changed my baby on this dresser for so very long. :)

I knew I wanted to use it somewhere, and then it hit me – with the new table-turned-desk for the office, I needed storage. Why not put the dresser in there?

As it was, it just looked a little off. So I was off to True Value again, checking out their selection. I found just the knobs I was looking for, and then picked up one of these jobbies as well:

I had one of these guides years ago and have no idea where it went – I was SO glad to see they had them! Turns out my hardware screw holes were two inches across, so I none of the holes on the guide matched up. I just drilled a new hole where I needed it, which made it a little harder to keep level. (Ignore the circles – those were reminders for another project.)

Normally you could just rest the ledge of the guide on  your drawer. But I’m difficult. Always. :)

I used the original hole in the drawer as my center, and made sure the two for the new pulls were level by using a small level on top of the guide. Then I marked the spots with a pen and drilled the new holes:

And installed my purdy new pulls!:

Love love LOVE! It makes it look so much more office-y. :)

(Just imagine it without the brick wall color and the cords piled up next to it, and with molding on the wall and all new art and accessories…umkay?)

I lined the drawers with a fun green contact paper:

You know I love you when I show you where I keep my Dymo label maker.

Don’t even think about it.

:)

And would you looky there…room to grow:

It’s going to work great in the office!

Speaking of the new look, I think I found all of my paint colors for the redo at True Value as well:

With white molding, of course. :) Now, I just need to paint. My lazy summer living booty is not looking forward to that…but my fall is coming, let’s get things DONE booty is saying let’s just do it already!!

We’ll see who wins. ;)

*I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.*