Family Eye Chart

I purchased a really nice and big picture frame on clearance for $2 about six months ago from Michaels. It has been collecting dust this entire time but I knew that once I came up with the right idea, the picture frame will be perfect! Long story short, while trying to finish decorating my bathroom I realized the really long metal art piece in the living room turned sideways would look perfect in the bathroom. So the bathroom is done and now I finally found a place for my $2 picture frame. I just need to vinyl it. : )

So this is how my project started:

The picture frame is $2, the matte board I bought with a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby making it $4.80. The rest of the materials is supplies I already have in my house. After several nights of designing the sign on my computer and then cutting, weeding the vinyl out, I have my finished eye chart.

I used dark blue vinyl to finish the sign. I could have used black but I thought this color would give it a little better look then just black and white. I also based my design off of a personalized eye chart I found on Red Envelope. I took that concept and related it to our family. I finished the chart by describing personal highlights of each member of the family. I loved how it turned out! And really love how my project cost less then $7 which is considerably cheaper then the eye chart on Red Envelope's website and it is created based solely on my family's "story".

Gallery Wall

One of my many goals this year is to finally finish decorating our house that we moved into over 2 1/2 years ago! I have many bare walls and too many areas of the house that need updating, the perfect example is our picture frames that have not been updated for nearly 2 1/2 years!

This project moved up to top priority only because I hurt my back and was confined to a chair for almost a week. The one thing I could do was sit with my laptop and search through hundreds of pictures. Once I updated all of the picture frames I wanted to move a group of picture frames from one wall to a different wall as I have a new project for the "yellow" wall which will hopefully be completed next weekend. This is what the first wall looked like before updating the pictures:

So, the picture is not very good. I didn't realize I didn't have a better picture until after I took everything down. But the yellow wall is what you see when you walk down into the basement into the big family room. This wasn't the best place for the pictures because the family room holds all of the balls, swords, plastic golf clubs, etc... that the boys play with all day and an accident was just waiting to happen. So we took down the vinyl and the frames, updated the frames and now moved it to this wall:

Now when you go upstairs from the basement (notice the yellow wall) you see the frames moved to the wall at the landing. And the other view is from the main floor looking down. Now I needed to add a vinyl saying but wanted something different then my last saying for these picture frames which said "...Because every picture has a story to tell". I then realized that every frame and every picture in the frame has either one or both of my sons in it. So I came up with the idea to do something that talks about my boys, specifically what they like. This is what I decided to do:

Now I need to add something above the light as well but for now I love how the pictures and vinyl sayings turned out! And if you also look closely in the pictures above, the wood right next to the hand rails changed colors! While I was updating the wall, my husband was staining the wood to match the darker colored hand rails he put in last Fall. : )

Hopefully next weekend I will have a new post on the updated yellow wall. I need my husband's help for part of it and due to his work schedule this week we just won't have time until next weekend to get it done!

Happy New Year!

My year is not starting off too good in the "blog" department considering this is the 17th day of 2012 and I do not have a new post yet! I did so well in December especially considering how busy the month was! Despite my lack of postings I have been busy and will have several new projects posted in the next few days.

My husband is being a trooper and helping me with all of these new projects that must be done "now" even though he has his own list of "Honey-Do" projects that I gave him! I won't give away what I'm working on but it does deal with chalkboard paint, picture frames, cookbooks, vinyl, gift bags, and floor trim. Ok, so maybe not all of those things are for one project but I have been using them all this last week and am hoping to finish these within the next few days.

So check back in the next couple of days to see some of the projects that I have been working on! :)

Cindy