This was totally not staged for the sake of my blog...

...apparently it's just fun to read in a basket.

Also, I kind of love the fact that he finally has enough hair to have bed head. 

Happy Friday, everybody!

DIY Key wall art

Yesterday in my post about our home library, I promised a tutorial for the key wall-art-thingy I did. Since I'm quite certain that you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats and with bated breath (and any other idioms you can think of to describe "waiting impatiently,") here it is!

A few months ago, I found this awesome wood frame on clearance at Michael's for $3. (They no longer have this exact one, but they have similar ones if you want to make one of your very own. I think they're $8ish when they're not on clearance.)

I forgot to take a picture of it before I started painting. Also, there's a toy car. I have a toddler. Although actually he was napping while I was painting this, so I guess I can't explain the presence of the car in this picture.

When I bought the frame, I immediately came up with an awesome idea for it, and then didn't do anything with it for at least three months. I'm pretty good at ideas; follow-through, not so much. I knew I wanted to paint it and hang it in the library with keys hanging from it, but I couldn't decide if I should paint it white (to match all of the furniture in the library) or red (for a bright pop of color in a room that is mostly blue and white.) So since I couldn't decide, I did nothing. Obviously. Then I was talking to my friend Teri about it (the same one who pretty much picked out the chairs for our library,) and she was like, "Oo, red!" So there you go. I wanted sheer white ribbon to hang the keys from, but I couldn't find any, so I had to go with non-sheer ribbon. I'm still on the lookout for thin sheer white ribbon, so if you have some, wanna share?? (Or at least tell me where you got it?)

I spent at least ten minutes agonizing over red paint colors at Michael's, and finally settled on this one:

Americana acrylic paint in Tuscan Red

I painted it with two coats, and I thought it looked kind of fabulous. The inside of the scroll work (or whatever you call it) is darker than the rest of the wood, so you don't need to worry about getting the red paint inside all of the edges of each hole, because it doesn't really show up. That makes it a lot easier and less time-consuming.

Again with the car...

I had three old keys (and two pretending-to-be-old keys that were actually new, also from Michael's) so I went to an antique store to find two more old keys, since seven keys just seemed like the right number for the size of the frame. When I had all of the keys, I laid the frame on the table and then spent a ridiculous amount of time arranging and rearranging the keys until I liked the way they looked. Then I cut the ribbon to the right length for each key, and attached each one to the back of the frame (right now they are attached with super-classy clear duct tape, just in case I find ribbon I like better and want to re-do it. Then I'll probably use some sort of glue. Maybe super glue? I'm not a glue expert.) I started by attaching the two outermost keys first and then did the one in the middle, then filled in the other four keys so they were spaced evenly. It seemed like a better idea than going from left to right, since I probably would've spaced them poorly and ended up without enough room for the last key. Then I hung it on a lonely wall in the library!

I'm not even going to lie: I'm not currently reading that book. The picture just looked better with a book on the table. The pillow and chair are from Ikea, and the wall paint color is Glass Sapphire by Behr. Also, the white spots on the wall aren't actually there in real life. My camera was just being a jerk.

So there you go. "Art!" Feel free to copy it. You don't even have to name a room in your house after me in exchange for the idea. You're welcome.

If you liked this, please click the smiling woman below! If you didn't like it, please click the smiling lady to make me feel better about you hating my idea. Because seriously, that's hurtful.

Our library!

We bought our first house in July of last year. It's a newer house and was in great condition, but like pretty much everyone who ever buys a house, we had a million ideas for things we would change after we moved in... most of which will probably never actually get done.

One of the first rooms you see when you walk into our house is a room that maybe was supposed to be a formal living room, but it's really small for a formal living room. Also, we're not really formal people, so we have no need for a room with the word "formal" in front of it. The people we bought the house from used the room as a music room:

Music room/Formal living room

A music room is a great idea if you actually have any musical instruments, but since we only have one guitar that neither of us really knows how to play, our music room would've been super lame. So I Googled "what to do with a formal living room" (Google knows everything), and everyone suggested making it a library, and I was like, "OH MY GOSH, DAN!! LET'S HAVE A LIBRARY!!!" Because reading is my favorite thing ever. (Let's ignore the fact that although reading is my favorite thing ever, I was apparently unable to come up with the concept of a library on my own.)

Anyway, the library has been a year-long project, and it could still use some more stuff on the walls, but it's totally my favorite room in our house, so I had to share.

You can click on all of these pictures to see them larger. Just so you know...

We got the bookshelves soon after we moved in. My dad helped me assemble them, and my mom helped apply wallpaper (that I spent weeks hunting for) onto the backs of the shelves. And then it came off after the wallpaper paste dried. (Apparently you can't use wallpaper paste on whatever that cardboard stuff is that they put on the backs of shelves. Just FYI.) I reattached it with scrapbooking glue dots because I was fed up and just wanted the project to be over. But once the backs were hammered onto the shelves, the wallpaper couldn't go anywhere.

Then for a year, we had shelves and books in the room and nothing else, because it turns out that I'm very indecisive when it comes to chairs. Dan even gave me a home-made gift certificate for chairs for Mother's Day (which was hilariously worded and the sweetest thing ever) and I still couldn't figure out what chairs I wanted. Then I was talking to my friend Teri, and she was like, "Oh, I just assumed you'd get big, comfy white chairs with blue pillows." And of course, that was exactly what the room needed. So if you need decorating advice, ask Teri. Unless you don't know her. In that case, I guess you're just out of luck.

We found the chairs at Ikea (and the story of the two trips we took to get them could be a blog post in itself), and while white might seem like a stupid color for a house with a toddler boy, the covers are removable and machine washable.

I still need something on the wall above the chair by the window and something else to the left of the bookshelves (so if you have ideas, please share!) but my current decorations include a key wall hanging/picture frame that I made yesterday and am ridiculously proud of:

I'll make a tutorial of how I made it soon (even though it was embarrassingly easy,)
but this post is already getting too long.

A framed quote that says "Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." that is hanging above a basket of Lucas's books (I bought it here on etsy):

I feel like this needs something else hanging under it. Either that or a short bookshelf. Any suggestions?

And some framed pictures of Lucas reading:

Also, various other random items that I don't feel like listing.

So that's my library! Like I said, the walls need some more oomph, but it's taken over a year just to get it to this point, so I can't really count on it ever being a whole lot better than this. Unless, of course some of you recommend awesome things for me to hang on my walls! So... get busy!