Stuff on the walls!

Well, it's official, after 14 months in our home, we have started putting things on the walls.  It was a big step for us. 

Between removing the popcorn ceilings, adding so, so much drywall, painting, and trimwork, we didn't want to hang anything on our walls.  We knew that if we put anything up before the walls were done, we would constantly be taking whatever art we hung up down so it would not get damaged while we worked. 

We started in the bedroom.  Matt and I bought this print from IKEA a few years ago on sale for less than 20 bucks.  I love how crisp it looks next to the Sporty Blue of the walls.  We're still tossing around ideas for what to put on the other side of the window, but it's really nice to have a little something in there.

With the bedroom looking spiffy, we turned our attention to the kitchen.  Our kitchen has two wood walls and a few drywalled walls.  As we're planning on gutting the whole room in the not too distant future, we really haven't done a ton in the kitchen in terms or renovations or decorating.  Sure, we removed the popcorn ceiling, painted the ceiling, changed the light fixture, replaced the handles and knobs on the cabinets and drawers, and busted down a wall; but it's not like any major changes have gone down.  We haven't even painted the walls yet (though color selection is underway). 

Since the walls haven't been painted yet, and we knew what we wanted to adorn one of the wood walls, we started there.  For Christmas, Matt's mom gave us a vibrant, framed needlepoint that she made for us.  It's stunningly beautiful.  Here's her signature on the bottom and a close up of the matting used to frame it. 

And a view of the whole piece.  We're just thrilled with it and it fits perfectly into our vision of the kitchen.  I am so impressed with her needlepoint skills.  Thanks, Sue!

With the needlepoint in place, we were ready to move onto the other side of the china cabinet (which is never moving again because it is freaking heavy!). 

Matt and I honeymooned in Sonoma County, CA.  We have since returned for the harvest festival and hope to head back later this year.  Every time we go, I take more and more pictures of the beautiful scenery of wine country.  We opted to use some of these pictures to decorate the kitchen.  I also had a handful of plain metal frames that I got back in college just sitting in a box in the basement.  We pulled those out and cleaned them up and framed our four favorite wine country pictures.  That was the easy part.  The hard part was picture placement.  Using paper that is the same size as the frames, we created dozens of arrangements.  Here are a couple of our top contenders: 

In the end, we went with a more spaced out version of the second arrangement.  Here's the finished (though no centered in the picture) wall:

And, a close up of the pictures we chose:

I love how having a few pieces of art on the walls makes our house feel so much more like home.  Now, onto all of those walls in the living room....