Julie’s frames

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 Rachel Atwell4 Comments

A few months ago, I found some frames at Goodwill.

Yes, I know its hard to believe, but I got these cross-stitched beauties for just $2.02 each.

Poor Julie, I’m sure she’s missing her oval frame.

After a few months of them sitting in my laundry room, I decided it was time to bring out a hammer for a little picture arranging. To get an idea for arrangement, I traced the three frames on some paper and then played around with the placement.

First I tried a vertical placement.
And then a grouping.

And then I spaced the grouping out.

And decided I liked it best.

Twenty minutes, six nails, and an injured thumb nail later, they were all up.

And now I have to figure out what I want to frame. What would you do? Pictures or art?

Around the House

function over form

January 9, 2014January 9, 2014 Rachel Atwell4 Comments

This past Sunday we bought our first piece of new furniture!

Since we’ve been married, we’ve picked up alot of items for our kitchen and a few things for the bathrooms – mostly all with wedding giftcards. We’ve also purchased a few of things from craigslist and thrift shops.

But since we’ve moved to our new home, our books we’re stacked high in the guest room. We needed a bookcase.

After looking at a few different places online, we decided to go with the Target Threshold Carson Bookcase in White. I also considered the Threshold Windham bookcase, but ultimately selected the Carson for a few different reasons – it had wider shelves {and an extra shelf!}, it was a little bit taller, and lastly Downton Abbey.

What? You don’t buy things that remind you of good characters from one of your favorite tv shows? Well, call me weird.

Our bookcase~~, Mr. Carson,~~ arrived yesterday morning so G had the after dinner task of assembling it. Once he finished, I started to “style” it with all the best tips I could remember from pinterest. And after a few shelves were started, I called it a night and went to bed.

And then this morning G looked at it and said something about it not having any books. haha, touché, Mr. A!

He was right though. As much as I love a “pretty bookshelf”, we had bought it because we needed space to store our books.

Sooooo, back to square one.

This time around, I’ll try to incorporate as many of our books while still balancing it with some of my ~~random~~ favorite pieces {I’m looking at you, ceramic cow!}.

How do you decide what goes on your bookcase?

31 days

31 days – fall 2013 – making our place “home”, pt. 2

October 22, 2013January 15, 2014 Rachel Atwell7 Comments

When we got married in July we knew the chances of us staying in this apartment past January were slim. But even though we would only be here for five or six months, I wanted to make this place feel like ours. I wanted to try and use what we had {even if that meant alot of paint} before we invested in other things. I wanted this apartment to be somewhere that we loved, not just lived.

Since I’ve moved in, all our boxes have been unpacked, ~~we’ve~~ G has put nails in the walls, hung and rehung pictures {some are still correct orientation pictures in them, please excuse me while I twitch}, and painted 12 of the 15 pieces of furniture we own.

And after months of inhaling paint fumes, I have to say, I’m happy we didn’t wait until our next place to settle in. It’s been fun to discover each others likes and dislikes, use a sander and toolbox, and learn some things along the way.