Resourceful

I had a couple of little things around the house bugging me that I solved this week with very little money spent - love it!

The carpet behind the couch always looks kind of trashed so I wanted a rug to help ease the wear and tear on the carpet. I had a runner in the laundry room that matches the big area rug in the family room. The laundry room is a heavily-trafficked area as we traipse through it everytime we go to or from the garage. But I took the runner and spent some time removing spots and scrubbing and vaccuuming to fluff it up a little and put it down behind the couch. Then I found a rug we had in our donation pile. It had a couple of paint spots but I was able to scrub them out with nail polish remover and put it down in the laundry room. Nothing more exciting than area rugs, I know.

Then I dealt with the gigantic wall behind our front steps. I didn't like the display of family pictures I had up there; they were too tiny for that vast wall. I thought I'd move them to the upstairs hallway and eventually get some big pictures for the wall. I was telling Andrew about this and he said that he really likes the family pictures where they are; they make him smile as he goes up and down the steps. Now if he'd told me how much he liked the beer sign in the family room, I'd say too bad, so sad, but I thought this was actually kind of sweet and so I tried to figure out how to improve the family picture display. So I spent some time going through pictures and frames and whatnot to beef up the display and make it bigger for the wall.

I even went step-by-step to arrange the display because stairs are such a pain. (When you move as much as we have lately, you learn from your past mistakes and get a definite method figured out.) I started with measuring up from the floor at the top and bottom of the steps, putting in a small nail and running a string the length of the steps. Then I traced the frames onto newspaper, cut them out and arranged and rearranged them on the wall until I found one I liked. Then I measured the hooks on the backs of the frames, made corresponding dots on the newspapers, hammered in a little nail, pulled down the newspapers and hung the frames. I finished by putting poster tack on the backs of the frames to keep them level (a great tip I got from a friend) even with dogs thundering up and down the steps.Imagine the newspaper is another collage frame. I'm much happier with this display and there's still lots of room to add on in the future.