Staycation Commencement

Today is the first day of my staycation!!! I worked last night so it was hard to drag myself out of bed this afternoon, but then it turned into a rather productive day. Can I share?...I have an awkward hallway at the bottom of my stairs that was painfully white. Being as we are renting and only planning on staying in this home for a year I am trying to not paint if at all possible. The problem is that I hate white walls. The other problem is that I dislike throwing away perfectly good things when I think that someday I could reuse them and make them something special; like 16 cheap, black frames that Devin and I have collected from our dorm/college years. Here is a visual of the problem at hand...

 The solution was to create a photo collage to eat up some space on my eternal white wall and find a creative way to use boring black frames that does not look cheap or "dorm-room-y". We found some of our favorite pictures from various adventures, birthdays, moves, our wedding, friends and family and turned them black and white giving it an artistic feel. The entire project cost less than $10.

A tip if you decided to do something like this yourself:
Take tissue paper and tape it together to create one large sheet. Play with your collage design until it is the way you like it. Then, lay the frames out on the tissue paper and trace around each, marking where the nails need to go to hang from the various fasteners on the back.

Then tape the tissue paper to the wall and put the nails where you marked for the frames. The tissue paper is easily removed and then all you have to do is hang your frames up and they are spaced exactly how you want them! Big time and stress saver!
 Here is how it turned out:

I was happy to have a project done on the first day. My day ended with an evening drive to the south Bronx to pick up an ugly mirror and lamp I found on craigslist. Next, I have to turn said ugly mirror and lamp into something pretty! I have my work cut out for me, here is what I have to work with:

 On our way back to the freeway we saw a street named "Casanova", so fun!

Good night all, tomorrow starts early with more projects! Chat soon!