Of all our weekends doing house projects, nothing has fueled more productivity than our house warming last weekend. We sent out the Evite a month in advance and that party date acted as our deadline to wrap-up our half-finished DIY endeavors. A flurry of building, hanging, and cleaning ensued but the item we are most excited to have ticked off the list is undoubtedly the window frames.
I saw the idea to turn old windows into picture frames in Ty Pennington at Home last summer but never really thought about doing it, until I saw this rugged stack at our trip to the Old Country Store in Rhinebeck, NY. A set of them suddenly seemed like a quirky but efficient way to tame our massive photo collection.
We started the process of prepping the windows during out 48-hour furniture-refinishing weekend. Here, we taped up the windows to prevent the new coat of paint from dripping on the glass.
We sanded them down to help get off any grime and create a smooth surface for the paint to adhere to. Then we added a fresh coat of white and voilá, we had two 12-photo frames.
In digging through years of photos, we skipped over the posed shots and compiled our best collection of art, adventure, and laughs. We printed the pictures at home, cut them to size with a paper cutter, and taped them into each pane. We hung each on either side of our living room archway and they have made me smile every day since.
In a few years, I’m sure well have built up an ornament collection with a few Waterfords, but in the name of good friends and the first Christmas in our new home, I’ll always keep a few computer paper snowflakes.
In my hometown of Hollywood, Christmas trees come from parking lots. My family and I would go to Home Depot every holiday but now that I live in the East and am in love with a man from the Poconos, cut-your-own is the only option.
The tree is up (smelling better than any Home Depot pine) and ready for decoration. Since we only have a small smattering of ornaments, we’ve decided to lay out craft supplies at the party and fold ornament-making into the festivities. I’m sure it will be hysterically kitschy but in exchange for personal touches and genuine character, I wouldn’t want our first tree to be any other way.
What I love about Thanksgiving decorations is: It shouldn’t take much. The food is center stage so all your table decorations need to be is a subtle compliment. I saw this image on our friend Tim’s blog,