Art is up!

Day by day we put art up on the walls. It makes SUCH a difference for the feel of the home. We still have a ton of pieces left to go up, but we're deciding on whether to do a salon style of little pieces in the bedroom or the living room. We're on the hunt for a nice low Danish credenza to go on the long wall of the living room, to drop our keys and mail on to, store games, etc. A big piece will need to go above that, but it's looking a little too gallery in that room as is so we talked about doing an installation instead. Sounds intense, no?

My idea, which Jeff liked, is to slice up a bunch of our birch logs from our wedding into thin (1/2 inch to 3/4 inch thick) rounds and then "glue" them up on the wall in a flowing organic shape. Sounds crazy but it's pretty in my mind. I say glue in quotations because really I'll be using the removable Command strips which have revolutionized the way we hang art. They are genius. We've been using the picture hanging strips for the art pieces, and because they are repositionable and removable and need no nail holes, we can be as indecisive as we want. They work out to be around 50 cents to a dollar each so they're not as cheap as nails, but with our crazy strong plaster walls, they are worth it. The strips I'll use to hang the log pieces are like those sticky foam squares, but they are removable (without damaging the walls like the foam squares) and a lot cheaper than the picture hanging strips, so doing a bunch of the log pieces on the wall won't be expensive. The only problem now is actually slicing the logs, which Home Depot refused to do for me (safety issues because they were too small and their saw too big), and we need some power tool to do that many slices, so I'm going to wait for Jerod to get back from the Bay Area to help. He's a good problem solver.

Here are some pictures of what we've recently done:

Jeff's soaring bald eagle curtain for his studio went up. He likes it. 

My mini arrangements from the leftovers of Kelsey's wedding, the very cool scabiosa pods and my favorite- craspedia, aka billy balls.

Lily Mae's embroidered mantra went up too above her dining room.

I like this corner of the sewing room/library/guest room. Those paint by number horses were found at a flea market for two dollars, the Lily Mae drawing was done by Jeffy, the Sasquatch drawing under the clock is by Jill Bliss, and the Sew for Victory is a WW2 repro.

We hung up Ken Garduno's piece next to Jeff's painting and inadvertently went with a black frame, light mount theme for the living room. Alex Gross' print was a wedding gift and went up first. We love it so much, it'll be one of those art pieces our kids will be fighting over when we kick it.

One of our favorites, Natalia Fabia's cougar with glitter blood, broke the black frame rule but works perfectly.

This is probably our creepiest piece (next to Ken's boogeyman piece which hasn't yet been hung due to the extreme level of creepiness it contains), Pennywise from the Stephen King movie "It", done by Alex Pardee. Who isn't scared of clowns??

I finally took down that awful metal and glass shelving unit from the bathroom which opens it up so much more. We don't want to destroy any art with our hot shower steam so this skeleton piece went up. It's a $3 frame from IKEA with a $2 sheet of printed wrapping paper. The wood frame looks good with the new mirror, and the colors complement the accent tiles that I used to hate and now really like. Just goes to show me that I don't always have to replace everything I dislike, I just have to find ways to make it work.

How awesome of a score is this? It's a toilet brush holder!! And it was the cheapest one they had of their tacky toilet brush holder collection at Bed Bath and Beyond so it wasn't even a question for me. Kitty toilet brush holder? Yes please. Sold. I bet my Mom is peeling out in her Mazda right now, headed to Bed Bath and Beyond.

My clock came!! I was so excited when it was waiting from me at the front door. I love it, and it does the job in the morning. Haven't been late since!

We're picking up Sue from the airport in a few hours and then driving out to Claremont to pick up our chef for the day (family friend Pete) who is going to make us a feast at the house tonight. After all this work, it'll be nice to kick up our feet and be cooked for. Something I could get used to...