Hanging Around the House and an Old Spice

I’ve spent the last few months taking care of some small projects around the house.  Even though I really want new floors and a new kitchen, these small decorating and organization updates settled down my need to update the house while costing just pennies in comparison.  Well, it didn’t really satisfy my need to redo the house, but I’m telling myself that it does.  After finishing these little projects I realized they all had something to do with hanging stuff on the wall. 

I’ve lived in this house for almost 9 years – 9 years next month actually.  Other than a couple of pictures I brought with me, my walls have been mostly bare.  After a couple of years of contemplating it, I finally pulled it together and utilized the pictures from my travels for the art on the walls.  Shortly after my first trip to Italy, I blew up a photo of Venice onto giclee and hung it in the dining area.  To add to that, I had three giclees printed for the staircase.  They are also of Italy – Venice, Burano, and Manarola. 

 
In January of this year, I got this wild idea.  I found 12 of these great unpainted frames that I sprayed white.  I wanted to put some of my travel pictures in them and hang them in my guest room.  However, after going through the pictures I wanted to put up I had way more picture than frames.  So the project was put on hold until I figured out what to do.  I found the frames again and bought 12 more.  It took me until the summer to get the new ones painted and just as much time figuring out what pictures to put in them.  I had really wanted at least one of each place I’d been, but then some places, like South Africa and Italy, I couldn’t pick just one.  Anyhow, after enlarging some more in giclee, I finally narrowed it down.  BUT, the next obstacle was hanging these frames.  Being decorative there weren’t any straight lines to center and the thought of putting 24 nails into my wall didn’t sound good at all.  Then a miracle happened.  I found this picture hanging tape.  Holy cow! This stuff is brilliant!  So we laid out the frames on the landing, and I placed the pictures in where I wanted them.   

We blocked out a space on the wall and filled it in rather than lining up and centering these frames. 

  I think they turned out great.  There is enough room on either side for another column of pictures so I can add more as I travel.  

The guest bedroom which I had been working on since back in January is finally finished.  I added another giclee above the bed and a collage of Africa alone on one of the side walls. 

Excuse the wonky picture – the panoramic feature on my phone kind of warped the middle of it.

After putting up shelving in the office, my next goal with that room is to get rid of those ugly plastic rolling carts.  One of those carts has 6 drawers and 4 of them were filled with punches that I use for card making.
 The drawers were full so finding what I was looking for when I needed it wasn’t easy.  Ikea makes these metal bars to be used for hanging things up in the kitchen.  Come to find out, they hold paper punches rather well also.  Now they are all in a single file line with easy access.  

For the exact same reason, I headed downstairs to the kitchen. The ingredient side of my pantry had become unruly, and the spices were partly to blame. 

I had put up some little shelves and lazy-Lucy spinning wheels to have more room for the little spice bottles but I found myself frustrated when looking for something.  Half the time I couldn’t find what I needed even though I knew I had it.

I found this on Pinterest, and it said to use a mop holder to hang spices on cabinet doors.  I scoured the stores and the internet to find mop holders that looked like this with no luck.  I took some time off from looking and then about a month ago searched Amazon for door-hanging spice holders and found them!  They’re so cool!  I love that I can see all the spices in one fell swoop, plus it freed up some shelf space.
I found a few spices that I had doubles of – most likely because I couldn’t find the one I had in the cupboard and bought a new one.  However, I also must have inherited some because I found this bottle of ginger. 
Based on the description of use, this spice seems to be old.  Using the term “Oriental” to describe Asian food is quite outdated.  I can’t remember the last time I heard that term.  I guess it’s time to throw out your spices when they’re old enough to contain racial slurs. 

It’s been nice getting things off the floor and shelves and out of drawers.  Making things easily accessible on the wall has been so convenient.  Plus it took my mind of new floors and kitchens while I was working on the projects.  Now that I’m done though, I’m back to obsessing about my floors I’m afraid.