Wall Week: Wedding Wall

To wind up "Wall Week" I have one more gallery wall. As it turns out, this one is my favorite, so it's lucky that it was also the last finished. 

Our Wedding Wall, from right to left, starts with the 1 year anniversary present Alan made me: our vows hung from one of the signs we made to direct people to the wedding. I love that the sign has our initials and an arrow pointing to the picture of us next to it.  Planned that.

The picture it's pointing to an enormous black and white that we blew up for a few bucks at Costco, and framed with one of the free frames Molika gave me.  There is no backing, and no glass, which doesn't matter to me. Though, I really should get some more tape to stick it to the wall so it stops having that big curve in it.

Next up is the GORGEOUS guest book my super wonderful friend drew for me. She used a picture of the house we got married at, and added us to the front porch.  But she free-handed all of that!  So talented.  She left all of the leaves off of the trees, the flowers off of the bushes, and the bricks off of the driveway, and our guests added those with their finger tips and some stamp pads. She worked the table to make sure everyone signed in, (and did it right) and she even took pictures of all of them doing it! Because she's amazing. 

Above that is a picture of every guest at the wedding. Love it. 

To the left is a gift from our officiant/day of coordinator/lovely friends.  The picture is one from the ceremony, and the words are all of the blessings our friends said during our "ring bearing" ceremony.  After deciding not to have a wedding party, we asked all of the friends and family who would have been included to say something about love or marriage while passing the ring from he back of the crowd to the front and eventually to us.  It was my favorite part of the ceremony, and actually the whole day.  And this is such a lovely reminder.

Above that is another gift from another couple of amazing friends.  She swears she bought this Etsy art before we even ever decided to get married.  Lucky for her it worked out for us. Even luckier, the color she picked out was one of our wedding colors.  Fate. And love. 

On the far opposite side of the wall is a first dance picture, and my gift to Alan for our 1st anniversary (a list of all of the things we did in our first year of marriage behind a silhouette of us). 

I just love this wall. I love all the white frames (so many of them were white to start, that I painted the rest to match).  I love the balance.  I love the straight line on the bottom. Mostly I love the story it tells about the best day of my life so far.

Love Love Love. 

Eventually there will be a few more additions: a couple more photos, my "something old" hankie, and Alan's airplane pin. 

As for the walls in our apartment... there are a few more that need some love:

Bathroom walls, and bathroom in general: SO BLAND.

Gigantor: the biggest wall in our apartment, spanning from living room to dining room is EMPTY.

Jacked: the wall in our dining room that inexplicably has a phone jack in the direct center. Ugh.

We'll get there.  Or maybe not. Got any ideas?

Wall Week: Worldly Wall

 For a super small space, our living room sure has a lot of empty wall space.  Well not so much anymore.  In a fit of frustration and exasperation, I slapped a bunch of nails into the wall and threw up everything travel related I could find.  I was SUPER over the blank walls, but also I was over the collection of crap on our floor.  

 My lovely friends D&B are my "Gallery Wall" idols.  I will in no way ever get close to their wall beautifying talents, but I have MUCH less patience for organization that she has, and MUCH less level-hammering skills than he has.  That being said, I love that they have a wall dedicated to travel pictures, and items they had picked up in foreign countries.  So I copied.  Sloppily.

 The silver Evil Eye decor came as a gift from our wonderful former coworkers. It is supposed to watch over us and protect our lives, home, and marriage from evil.  It definitely adds Turkish flare.

I KNOW I asked Alan to save the key from our first home together. He KNOWS he did.  NEITHER OF US know where that key is at the moment, but there's a place for it when we find it...

We ended up with lots of coinage from our trips over the past few years.  I straight up hot glued them to some fabric, and hot clued the fabric to the back of the frame.  It'll peel off if we ever want to spend it. 

I wish I had collected old maps wherever we went.  Or even just tourist maps.  That being said, I probably would have tossed them all when we were packing to come home.  So I Google mapped all the places we've been and lived in the past few years, cut them out in heart shapes, and glued them to burlap.  

Pictures are of us, and the things we say in Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Turkey.  

The paintings are a Map of Turkey, and Alanya Scenery. 

I have more things to add some day, (a HUGE map of the world to chart our adventures, Turkish tea and coffee saucers and spoons, the missing key...) but for now, this is it.  It's not perfect, but it's not on the floor, and the wall no longer looms like a gigantic space of boring.

Wall Week: Frame Fabulous

So, I've been looking all over for some HUGE and inexpensive frames to decorate the wall behind our bed. I was having so much trouble finding any for good prices... garage sales, swap meets, and the Goodwill were all over charging.

Just as I was about to give up, my darling friend invited me over to "swap meet" through her left over wedding decor, AND LOOK WHAT SHE HAD!  All. For. Free.  Gotta love her.

Most were in need of a good cleaning, and some desperately needed updating.  Nothing some paint can't fix.

Luckily, I happen to have all the colors in my gorgeous quilt as paints.  Apparently I love these colors.

So I freshened them up with some coats of paint that would go with the quilt,

and the lamps. 

And then I hung them on the wall in a somewhat random pattern.

LOVING how they turned out.  Also, bonus: we had an earthquake the other night and none of the frames shook off the wall and crushed our heads!  In fact, without glass and backings the frames are light enough to probably only bruise, rather than smash, our heads if they fell.  Though, that would probably be super scary.

Wall 2: Decorated for free, Yo!

Week 39: Wall Week: Mini Wall

Welcome to "Wall Week," where I catch you up on what I've done to transform our walls from boring things that hold up our ceiling to something fun to look at.  Keep in mind that we're renting, and don't want to do anything more drastic than hanging a few things with nails.  Definitely no painting. 

Today you get to meet "Mini Wall." Mini hangs out in our kitchen between two cupboards.  We've grown close during my hours of dish washing, but to be honest, she's kind of a dud.  No real personality, or character.  But she's got potential.  And when I asked if she'd be interested in a makeover, she was open to it. 

So I took some left-over twine, a stack of paint chips we're thinking about for our dresser, and two nails...

I wrote s few words in permanent marker...

And I gave Mini a new fresh look.  

Now whenever I get grumpy about all the dishes, Mini reminds me of what the dishes represent, and all I have to be thankful for. Thanks Mini, you're such an optimist!