Couch vs. Throne?

So how bad is it that after walking around Nebraska Furniture Mart for an hour trying to decide on a couch, that I'm legitimately considering buying a huge leopard print throne (technically called an extra wide chaise) instead of a couch?  See below for a bad cell phone picture.

Here are the things I'm telling myself:
"Common Amanda, how many times has anyone really sat on our couch besides Kevin or I?"  "Wouldn't this be a comfortable place to sit every night?"  "Maybe it is so off-the-wall that it could be trendy?"

...Someone talk me out of it! 



DIY vase and Air Plants

The hotel I stayed at in Atlanta last week had some really creative ways of displaying fresh flowers.  I think making a vase like this would be a fun do-it-yourself project.  All you'd need is a big glass vase, some smaller vases, and some metal wire.  Wrap the metal wire around the neck of the little vases than string the metal wire over the top of the big vase and bend the wire into a few circles inside the vase to hold it into place. 

Or, insteady of putting water and fresh flowers in these vases, you could use air plants.  Have you guys heard of these nifty little plants?  I just discovered them a few weeks ago.  The best part about air plants is that they don't need any soil to survive (you just soak them in water once a week).  There are so many fun ways to display them:

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I haven't seen these little plants around in any local stores, but you can easily buy them online.  To see all the air plants on sale at Etsy.com click here!  I like the idea of an air plant subscription - this seller is offering 3 air plants per month for 3 months for a grand total of $32.50 (including shipping). 

CB2... i love you

I couldn't believe my luck last weekend when I arrived at my hotel in Atlanta and right across the street was one of my favorite stores: CB2!  Owned by Crate and Barrel, it's sort of like an upscale (but still affordable) Ikea.  I've been an avid reader of their catalog for years and love checking out their stuff online, but had never had the opportunity to go the store... Omaha, NE is generally not the first place that the really trendy stores go.

So after work, I hurried my butt over to the store to check it out.  It did not disappoint.  Lots of cool ideas and beautiful accessories.

Of course I couldn't leave the store empty handed so I bought one of the most impractical things to take with me on the flight home... 8 new wine glasses!  Kevin and I love wine but have been drinking out of a bunch of old mismatched glasses.  I carried-on this box through 2 airports, and to my husbands surprise made it home with all 8 glasses intact.  Sheer determination :)

"Arc Style" and "Fushion Style"

And, I just found out they have a blog, and it's a good one!  I especially like the "how to" section.  Isn't this a fun (and cheap!) idea for a Christmas tree? 

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Pumpkins!

I know what I'm going to do when Kevin's out of town this weekend... decorate a pumpkin!

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Clean closet

The bottom of my closet is always in a state of perpetual mess.  Even if I manage to organize and hang up all my clothes the floor always gets neglected.  Well after reading a blog post by Young House Love, I was inspired.  It look less than 15 minutes to straighten up, but it made such a difference.  My shoes are so much easier to find now... imagine that?  :)



Custom wall art for $100

After reading this blog post on Young House Love describing how they created a wall collage using white picture frames I was inspired to try it myself.  Last fall Kevin and I picked up a bunch of white frames at the Ikea in Minneapolis while we were there visiting friends.  Gotta love the prices at Ikea - $2.99 for 5X7"s and $4.99 for 8X10"s.  We got enough picture frames to cover a 6 foot X 4 foot area and two small picture frame shelves for $90. 

The next step involved actually hanging the frames.  NowI wanted them to be hung sort of randomly (like we didn't try to hard), but of course that always ends up being... well... hard.  So rather than put a dozen holes in the wall I cut paper into the shapes of all the frames and played around with a bunch of different configurations on the floor before hanging the pieces of paper on the wall with sticky tack.  Once I was satisfied with the way the design looked on the wall, I hung the frames. 

I hate to admit, but the frames hung empty for almost 6 months while we were busy wedding planning.  Let that be a lesson to you - put something in the frames before you hang them!

After the wedding and honeymoon were over I finally had time to start decorating again, and the first thing on the list was to get something in those empty frames.  We took over 1,000 pictures during our honeymoon to Italy so I decided to include pictures from out trip.  I wanted to use black and white pictures that were very stark and artsy rather than the more typical gray-scale black and white pictures.  I found this free open-source software online called Photoscape that helped me do it.  Click here to download it for free. 

Once photoscape has downloaded, open the application and click the editor button.

Open the picture you'd like to edit.  Click the button that is half white half black to change to stark black and white.

Adjust the threshold until you like the affect.

Here are some of the pictures we created:

Gondola's in Venice, Italy

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

We printed the pictures off at Costco, which is super cheap for photo printing (especially big enlargements).  Only 13 cents for 4 X 6, $1.49 for 8X10's and 2.99 for 12X 12's!

We put them in the frames, and here is the final product.  Custom wall art for $100.