Gallery Wall and Other Art

I have been wanting to do a "galley wall" and just do more to decorate my walls for awhile now. My sister Kristi, who should be an interior designer, graciously offered to help.

Here is one wall's "before."

I had purchased two signs at a discount, knowing I wanted to do something different with them and just use the boards instead of starting from scratch.

The first one:

We turned this sign into a hook for the dog leashes. Kristi came up with the fabulous idea of putting each dog's paw print for the respective leash.

Joseph helped, against his will.

We found, through trial and error, and it is better to brush the paint onto the dog's foot. You can see for the two paw prints for Tiny which one we pushed her paw into the paint and which one was painted on (we painted on Osa's but it's smudged because that dog has hair everywhere). After that piece of the project was complete, I needed to secure the hooks.

I used screws with bolts so I could secure them tightly and not have them move around.

We ended up removing the harnesses since it looked cluttered, but I'm happy with the end result.

The second sign:

I asked Kristi what we should do about this board. I was worried it was too long. She painted it.

Kristi is a perfectionist. I always find it amusing. I took this photo and was typing a Snapchat and Kristi said, "Are you writing, 'Painting freehand is stressing this perfectionist out?'" It was super creepy because that was exactly right.

Look at that glint in her eye. She's reading your mind right now.

I had to remove and re-add the hardware so that it hung vertically instead of horizontally. I originally wanted it on the gallery wall but I loved where Kristi put it even more.

For the final piece, I unscrewed the wall art from the  back:

I didn't think we could hang it on my gallery wall because that wall is white. Kristi came up with another fabulous idea of adding ribbon to the edges.

And we hung it next to my sea painting, which is on a grey wall.

The "leftover" pieces really came in handy. I'm using the back piece to clothespin coupons and such in the office (I had the tiny clothespins leftover from that baby shower game where you can't say certain words or you steal the clothespin):

Do you remember my hearts (blog here)? I re-used the attachments holding the wall art onto the mesh:

And after a few different suggestions and tweaks...

My gallery wall is complete.

I couldn't have done it without Kristi! I am really happy with it. I may add a few more framed photos, but I think it looks fine how it is too.

Fossil Creek

I told J before summer started that I wanted to check out Fossil Creek. I heard it had a waterfall and was pretty awesome.

You have to buy a permit, and the spots fill up quick, so two months ago we bought a permit and told the family that if anyone wanted to go, they needed to buy one too. My oldest nephew Matt bought one so we planned out the day.

There is a 14 mile dirt road. Which didn't sound so bad at first, until you consider the fact that you just crawl along. J was cracking up because we got stuck behind two high profile vehicles and he wanted to pass them in his low to the ground car.

There are park rangers that check your paperwork and make sure you have a permit. I had googled the best place to park so we were in the Fossil Creek Bridge lot. Come to find out, that is the best swimming hole area, but I wanted to check out the waterfall. We really should have parked at the Waterfall Trailhead parking lot. So we had to walk an 1.35 miles one way. The hike to the waterfall is a two mile round trip, so we definitely got our walking in.

Before we hit the waterfall we came to a little spot where we sat down to eat our sandwiches, and we explored a bit.

The water was cold and it was rainy, but that didn't stop Matt or Jaylee.

Breezy made sure to keep out of the water.

We climbed up to where people were cliff jumping.

The waterfall was off to the right of where I'm standing here.

You can see Breezy down below. That's where we sat to watch Matt, Austin, and Jaylee jump off the cliff. I was pretty impressed with them.

They swam across to get to the other side, but J and I headed back down.

That's to the left of the waterfall, where they swam over. Then they swam back and jumped from the right.

We decided we wanted to go under the waterfall.

After we were done, we hiked back to the car and checked out the swimming hole area.

We definitely tired out the Breeze.

It was a fun day. It's nice having a nephew who is old enough to drive his own car and take his own passengers. We are already planning for next year.

There was one point where Breezy was trying to put on her shoes, so I grabbed her arm to steady her. Then I shook her a little to tease her. I grinned and said, "I'm a blessing and a curse Breezy." She grinned back and told me, "You are a blessing who likes to have fun." New life motto. Someone put that on a t-shirt for me.

Also, Matt thought he could swing out over the creek and come back dry:

https://youtu.be/DP5Kr_uD7s0

Present for Breezy

Breezy's birthday was in January. I had this blog ready to go in February, but we just now, in July, finalized it (I blame you Breezy).

I had an idea of a present I wanted to make her because of something I saw on Pinterest. I knew that girl had a ton of nail polishes, and I was seeing these nail polish racks/shelves and thought it would be perfect.

My only problem is that I still hadn't finished my own stinking cabinet project (found here) and I needed to figure out what I was going to do. There are a lot of tutorials for making racks out of foam board, which is actually kind of brilliant, but I decided that was cheap and I wanted to make something out of wood.

Other than cutting the large pieces of wood (I am really clumsy and afraid of cutting my finger off so J helps with that) I did this all by myself. 

One of the blogs I saw that showed how she made her nail polish rack said she put in a small piece of wood so the bottles wouldn't commit suicide. I thought that was a good idea; I chose a small piece of molding, cut it down, and nail gunned it to the front.

I gave Breezy her present with apologies for the lateness in February. She said she needed to paint her room and then we could hang it up. So I waited.

Sunday was the day. She asked me to bring my tools.

Note to self: Next time bring a level and a manual screwdriver. Not just the stud finder, D rings, screws, drill, drill bits, and extension cord. Luckily my Dad had the other stuff on hand.

We had brought the dogs to Mom's house so of course Tiny was in the middle of things.

This girl has 136 bottles of nail polish.

My Dad knew something was going on but didn't know exactly what. When we were done hanging it, he asked what I had been doing. I showed him a photo. He made an exclamation of disbelief. My Dad is weird about putting holes in the wall. He asked me if I had obtained permission. I replied that I had. It's Breezy's room. Breezy overheard and asked just where is she supposed to put all of her nail polishes? Dad replied in the trash. He really likes to tease her.