Wall Gallery

Let me just start off this post by stating that I am very much not the Queen of Pinterest.

Don't get me wrong--I adore Pinterest, and have found some great ideas there, but when it comes to carrying them out, sometimes I lack the...patience. Yes, the patience. Some people have a lot of time for DIY projects. I am not one of those people.

For a couple of weeks now, I've had a bunch of pictures in black frames laid out on the living room floor, waiting to be hung on the wall where my couch will go. I'd been pinning some ideas for layouts and how to get them just so, and I had a plan. Today, I even bought some brown paper so I could carefully cut out pieces in the sizes of all my frames and tape them to the wall to make sure everything was lined up perfectly.

I got about five minutes into that before realizing that this was going to be a ginormous pain in the ass, and abandoned the paper in favor of winging it.

Winging it...that's scary.

I started with one of my new frames, a 14"x14" that holds nine Instagram photos.

From top left, across each row: Summer, Libby, Donald, Sarah
the Duck Lady, Maayan the Duck Lady, Matt, Sarah (local), Chris
and Meghan and her daughter Roz. 

I bought two of these frames and a bunch of prints recently, and I'm pleased with how they look. I wanted more pictures of my friends up, and some more recent ones of family.

Before long, I had my whole bottom row in place, and it wasn't too bad. I used my tape measure to make sure I had an even distance between frames.

Here's a close-up of the other Instagram frame:

Shae, my brother, Mom and Dad, Millie, the parents and I,
Harley Dude, Sarah and her daughter Julia, Mom and Dad,
Kathy (English Mum) and I in February. 

Great-great grandfather, John Cooper; a pic from Mom's garden,
and my graduation from CSU, Chico.

I got them mostly straight and even, so I was ready to tackle the next level.

This level was slightly harder, as I had to pull out the ladder and keep up the measuring. I added a small shelf, first, then two cute candle sconces I got on Amazon this week to add some curves to the gallery (too many right angles otherwise). Then a few more frames, a cute hanging clipboard I found on clearance at Target, and a small wooden California I found in Santa Rosa a year ago. I added three Balleek (Irish) china pieces to the shelf, and voila! 

The pictures are of Grandma Bean and I in Maui when I was 14,
and Aaron and I on my graduation from high school.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I might add a bit more scroll-y stuff as time goes by (especially under that bottom row). The couch will be centered under all of this--oh yeah, I got a couch!! I found it this week at R.C. Willey. It's gray, and perfect for curling up with a book or napping on a lazy Sunday. It's also much nicer than the previous one I had in Stockton. I can't wait to get it (another week or so) and have a real piece of furniture there, instead of a beanbag chair.

They had different color options--you can *just* make out the
gray I chose on the love seat in the lower left of the pic. So:
big sofa, different color. 

Mom gave me an old easel she's had for many years, and I've been looking for the perfect picture to prop on it. When I was at R.C. Willey, I was chatting with Sarah while looking at clearance couches, when suddenly I looked up and saw the perfect piece for the easel, for my whole condo.

I'm going to get some potted (fake) plants for the little tray.

Oh! And I have a dining room table. Last week, Mom saw an ad for an estate sale in her neighborhood, and one item advertised was a glass-top dining table with four wrought iron chairs. She called me and asked if I wanted her to go the next morning (I had to be at work) to check it out. "Sure!" So she did, and texted me a picture of the set. I liked it immediately, and at $100, it was an absolute steal. When we got it set up in my dining space, we both did a little shimmy. It's absolutely perfect--size, colors, everything.

The mess in the corner is since removed--that was eBay stuff
waiting to be sorted through and listed.

Also today, I finally found a place for the Casa Meg banner (even my WiFi is called CasaMeg) I made a month or so ago. This is a small wall between the living room (left) and my bedroom (right). The pic is uneven because I had to lean over the kitchen counter to get it centered at all.

The California frame is from Kohl's. I had seen it and wanted it, but didn't splurge until later, when I fund it on clearance for something like eight bucks. The picture in the frame is one I took of the Golden Gate Bridge several years ago (I want to say around 2007) while on a boat tour of the bay.

Slowly but surely, this little condo is feeling like home. After a couple of weeks of, "Oh, my God, what am I doing in this dump?" I'm finally starting to fall in love with the place as I hoped I would back in June, when a cursory bunch of pictures in an online real estate listing captured my attention. It still needs a few things--window coverings will be a nice change from the parchment paper--but those are coming. I'm waiting on $40 worth of rebates from Lowe's (for buying my paint there) to use on blinds. But every day, I come home from work and unlock the front door and think, "Ahh, yes. I'm home."