halloween pictures

My favorite wall in the house is this one going down my hallway. It's a little picture gallery of sorts. It is usually filled with pictures of my kids, but also other family members too -grandparents, great grandparents, anyone who will pose for a cute picture.

I was thinking about past Halloween costumes and thought it would be fun to print them all up and switch out the everyday pictures with spooky Halloween ones. The kids have loved looking at themselves, especially the baby ones. They just can't believe they were once as small as their little brother!

I have a couple spots left for Shrek, Fiona, and Gingy! Gotta get those done!

wall quilt

I wish I had a good camera because I love how this turned out.

This was really easy and a pretty inexpensive alternative to buying framed art. I used the same method as the crafty cork boards (w/o the lining and I stapled the fabric onto the canvas). I put it together with canvas that I bought at Michaels and then Anna Maria Horner's Drawing Room line of Home Dec fabric. I bought the fabric off of etsy.com for a pretty good price and used coupons for the canvases. Did you know you can use Joanns coupons at Michaels? It took a couple of trips, but I bought all of the canvases at a discount. All-in-all the project cost about $55.

I was afraid my husband was going to hate it. He's very traditional (and opinionated) and it's a bit ecclectic (which is what I love), but he came home and helped me put it together. I was so surprised I almost cried. I love LOVE the way it turned out. It really brightens up the room and makes me smile.

crafty cork board

I had never considered myself "crafty" until this project. Perhaps being "crafty" has held a stigma of my mom and aunt toll painting cutesy pumpkins and other Relief Society-making-wreaths-out-of-garden hoses type projects. But, now I give in. I'm crafty and that's ok dang it.

I've been on the hunt a while now for a cute cork board or magnet board that I can put in my laundry room to post notes on (or more likely stuff I want).

Anyway, the space that I wanted to put it in was sort of limited so I decided to make my own. Walmart sells a 4 pack of cork board squares that are 12 x 12 (but they are pretty thin) for only $5. I wanted them to be thick as if they were on a canvas so I decided to hot glue 3 of them together. (Also, one is too thin to use - the pin would just hit the wall).

Here's how I did it. It's so easy I'm not really sure that a tutorial is necessary but what the heck.

1. Hot glue the cork board together. I did 3.

2. Cut fabric 16 x 16. I also cut out a piece of muslin to put in between the fabric and the cork board so the cork board wouldn't show through. Don't forget to iron your fabric.

3. Layer the fabric (wrong side up), muslin, and then cork board and pin up two (opposite) sides. I just used push pins to stick the fabric down so I could use the fabric again and switch out the fabric when I wanted to.


4. Fold up the other two sides. The easiest way to explain how to do this and have nice corners is to fold up the ends like you do when you wrap a gift - except fold that top flap towards the board with the bottom flap following.

5. Make sure everything is pulled nice and tight.
Viola - you're done. I covered some buttons and hot glued them onto push pins so the pins were cute too.


edit:: I should have put on here what I did to hang mine. Sorry for those of you that have had their boards fall off their walls (and then destroyed by their toddlers). I just hot-glued a picture hanging hook to the back of it.