DIY Hobby Lobby Art

I have been so swamped lately with trying to get our house on the market and staging it. One of the biggest challenges I have found is essentially eliminating the pictures around the house that are personal photos of our family. Boy is that hard to do!! But I do understand the reasoning -- so I've been trying to come up with cheap, easy replacement art for our family room and living room.

I found {and fell in love with} this awesome art piece at Hobby Lobby! It was perfect! Full of fun color, non-taste specific and non-personal! Until.. I looked at the price tag. $129.99. Even if they were half off, which they weren't, that's still a lot of money to spend on "staging" art. Yikes! I passed it up and walked a few aisles away when it dawned on me that it would be such an easy DIY copy! I quickly ran back over an snapped a photo!

I knew I had an old frame lying around the house I wasn't using. I bet you do too?! I got this one with my mom at an estate sale years ago for $4. You can always find old frames at Goodwill or garage sales! I have tons that I buy with no specific purpose but are so nice to keep on hand for little projects. Bonus ~ if you're not happy with *said* project you're not heavily invested so it's okay!

sorry it's upside down. bad art but cute frame with lots of potential, right?!

So here's how I did it!

1. *optional* If you want to paint the color of your frame {I think a fun bright frame would look great!!} you'll want to do that first.

2. I bought a large piece of white poster board to cover up the original print with craft glue. As long as your print isn't too big this should work and they usually aren't more than $0.50 at Hobby Lobby! Use the matte side of the poster board.

3. I grabbed about 15 different scrapbooking papers from this aisle at Hobby Lobby. They are often 1/2 off regular price of $0.60 or so. Don't worry about being too matchy ~ I think the more random the prints are the more interesting it will turn out!

oh hello, little shopping buddy

4. Start cutting "petals". I made a variety of sizes for each color and put them in piles by size.

5. Glue the petals down with the craft glue (glue stick would be fine too!). I started with an outside circle and worked my way in. IMPORTANT: don't go in a perfectly circular motion - glue the petals down at different areas so there's not a pattern to how they are layered!

6. Voila! I waited for mine to dry overnight and had the hubby hang it in our family room. I love it every time I look at it!

Happy Tuesday!

411

I thought this was a cute blogging prompt {I hope you'll join me and do it too!}

1. How long have you been blogging? And what got you started on blogging? 
I've been blogging for almost five years now off and on at this page! I started just as I was graduating college in Oklahoma because I wanted to keep a journal for myself as I started a career and Joe finished medical school. This is going to sound terrible but I'm very surprised with myself I've kept up with it {even after some long breaks here and there!} - just because I'm VERY much a project starter but sort of bad at finishing all the projects I usually have going at once. :) But I'm so glad I've done this - we've had so many life transitions while I've had this blog and it's fun to look back and read my account of everything as it happened. 

2. Did you go to college? If so, where, and what did you study?  
I went to the University of Oklahoma and got a BS in Industrial Engineering. I love the field because it's kind of a "soft" engineering - it's all about engineering for large systems and having a good knowledge of people, human factors and how we interact with large systems. I do wish sometimes I would have chosen something that channeled more creativity though! I never thought I was creative or could BE creative since I loved math so much. But you can be both! :)

3. Where have you traveled?  
I feel so lucky to have traveled as much as I have - which isn't really all that much compared to a lot of people! When Joe and I were in school and newly married we went on three or four cruises and we loved that - we just really love cruising because it's convenient and you get a lot of "bang for your buck"! So we've been lucky to visit most of the Caribbean islands - at least for a day or so. We took our Honeymoon to St. Maartin and visited St. Barths too. When I graduated college the ONLY thing I wanted was to celebrate with a long trip to Paris and London so we did that. I love London - it's definitely my favorite city as of now because of the great museums, nice people, the royalty/traditions, gardens everywhere, fish and chips.. just love it. Seriously. I am not afraid to admit I've begged Joe to get his medical license in the UK so we could move there. And I still would if he were to ever say yes! I also traveled for a living before I became a stay at home mom. I went all over the US and also to Italy for work. 

4. If you won the lottery what would be the first thing you'd buy?  
I'm sure I'd obviously save a lot of it or do something boring like pay off medical school loans but if we're talking pure splurge? I'd buy a big country lot of land near my parent's farm and build a giant house with a big porch on the front and a pool in the back and big windows and lots of room for my kids to run around. 

5. What are your three biggest pet peeves?  
I hate when people put their car in park in a drive-through - doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose? I hate when people wait until a cashier reads the total at the checkout to *begin* digging their checkbook/wallet out. You know it's coming, right? And I just hate cars driving around with loud music playing. Noise pollution. 

6. What is your favorite movie? 
I love The Long, Long Trailer which is a hilarious movie Lucille Ball did. She's my idol so I've seen it a million times and laugh so hard each time I watch it. 

7. What's your drink of choice: wine, beer or liquor. Or water, soda or tea?
I want so badly to "get" wine but I don't. I really don't like beer. I will always appreciate a good margarita but I don't have them very often. I almost always order iced tea when we eat out and I always have sweet tea in our fridge. I just love it. My mom makes the best sweet tea!!

8. What is something you enjoy doing when you have "me" time? 
I'm afraid I love watching reality tv like The Real Housewives series but I love reading too!

9. If you could have a $10,000 shopping spree to any store what would it be?
Either Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn - places I never shop because they are too expensive! :)

10. Share with us an embarrassing moment of your past. Or present.
When I was in high school I won a local beauty pageant and the year after I had won, as part of the crowning of the next "queen" I was asked to do a little reading in front of the audience for entertainment before they announced the winner. I totally put off practicing but I just studied the night before and felt pretty sure that I had the entire thing memorized by the time I got there the next day. Well. I got out on stage and with hundreds of eyes watching... I blanked on the entire thing. I remember just repeating the line I had gotten stuck at over and over hoping it would spark the memory of what was next but I just had nothing. I found my mom's face in the crowd and she just looked horrified - Hah!!! I quickly said something to kind of "sum" up the point of the piece and walked off the stage. I was so mortified!! To this day I hate speaking (even praying in public!!) without having something rehearsed and memorized perfectly!

11. What day would you love to re-live again?
Definitely our wedding day! I feel so badly, but we don't have video of it and I feel like I've forgotten so many details. 

12. If your life was turned into a movie what actor would play you?
I feel like for some reason Mandy Moore kind of acts like me in movies? I think she's kind of the sweet girl next door with a little quirky side. 

13. What are the jobs you had in high school/college/early years?
I've had so many random jobs - I helped at my grandma's daycare very early on in the summers - like when I was 14 and 15. When I was 16 I worked at Gap for gas money and car insurance funds - my parents had a rule that I had to pay those myself to teach me responsibility. Then I moved way up in the world and became a manager at Claire's at the end of high school. I had to pierce kids and babies ears! I have no idea how they trusted me to do that!! I tutored elementary kids as part of a state grant in Oklahoma when I moved there for college and then did research with an engineering professor until I graduated and my first job out of college was being a manager at Hallmark corporate. 

14. If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?
I would love to visit Ireland! I want to go for a long enough time that I could rent a car and drive coast to coast - that's my dream vacation!!

15. Show us the most current picture of you, your family or something meaningful to you.
The little man that owns my heart, taken yesterday :)

16. Where do you see your life five years from now?
We know we'll be in Kansas City. I'd like to see us living in our "forever home" where we will raise our kids. I would like to have one or two more children and maybe homeschooling them. I'd like to be teaching a college level engineering or math class one or two nights a week. I hope we're still working hard and saving for fun vacations and teaching our kids to be good people.

Now I want to hear your answers!!

Jersey Boys

Last Friday night Joe and I went on a date to see Jersey Boys! He had gotten me tickets for my birthday in November and I have been anxiously counting down the days to go. I think this was the first time we had hired a babysitter to go out to dinner and a show EVER that didn't include a work event for Joe!

We went to a steakhouse for dinner and had an awesome meal! We kind of didn't know what to do with ourselves without having a toddler to occupy/feed/entertain/chase - please tell me I'm not alone here?! Hah!

We had second row seats to the show and we sat in between two older couples. It just cracked me up - I realized they probably remember when the Jersey Boys were putting records out!

We had such a fun night! If you ever get the chance to see this show, do it!

Oh What a Night it was! ;-)