Honeymoon Keepsakes

This summer Darryl and I travelled to Berlin and Prague for our (just under 2 years later) honeymoon and it was amazing!  We went for 9 days and had such a wonderful time exploring together and seeing new sights, learning about new cultures, their foods, their languages, their ways of life.  I was 28 weeks pregnant at that point and we figured this would be our last opportunity to do something big on our own, just the two of us, before we become a family of three.  We tend to always find excuses not to go on vacation - namely money-saving excuses but man were we glad to have done this.


I'll have to do up a separate post with some pictures and highlights about the trip, but last week I put together a little something to keep all of our keepsakes from the trip together.


It's nothing new or earth shattering, but displays everything that would have otherwise sat in a drawer, forgotten for years on end.


I started by laying out everything I wanted to include:

I bought two black Ikea Ribba frames and just used the inside paper to put my momentos on...

Once I was happy with the rough lay out, I trimmed the map to fit.  I actually had to use two because it wasn't long enough.  I had seen some cute ideas where people used the map to cut out letters that could say "Berlin" for example, but I quickly decided against that because I knew I wanted to have our main routes, streets and spots highlighted to look back on.

Our framed keepsakes for Berlin...

And for Prague...

The reason some of the frames may seem unbalanced with greater areas of map showing and no keepsakes in certain areas is because those were the main travelled spots that have highlighted and circled spots that we relied on to get from point to point and I didn't want to cover them up.

Now we just need to find a spot to hang them, I'm thinking in our bedroom, but that's at the bottom of our to-do list right now.  Only 6 weeks until our due date and we are hustling to get a livable nursery and non-construction zone upstairs before that happens.  Fingers crossed!

How do you display or keep momentos from your travels safe?

Adding to the Gallery Wall

We recently added a couple of frames to our gallery wall.  I'm short on time so let's just get to it, here it was before...

 

 

 

 I had two more things I wanted to add to our wall, but felt the need to wait until after we were married to hang them.  So after our wedding we added two more frames on the left side ...

 

 

 

 

But seeing as the sunshine is whiting the pictures out, here's a close up.  One is of one of my favourite engagement pictures where it shows both of our families officially joining as one...

 The second one I had seen at 29 Rue House and thought they were absolutely adorable...little personalized periodic table of elements art!  So once we were married I just had to do one up for us.

 

 

And that's that.  Super quick post!  I love these two new additions and am already looking for a few more things to add to the wall.

 

I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, enjoy your long weekend if your work gives you one, enjoy time with loved ones and filling your bellies!

 

 

Art Installation

We've been in our house for almost 3 years now and I can finally say we've HUNG SOMETHING ON OUR WALLS!!!  I know I can't be the only person who has trouble commiting to hanging things on their walls...right?

In our open concept living/dining room, we have a fairly long expanse of uninterrupted blank wall...

This is just the dining half, but the living room is a bit of a mess right now so I'll spare you that view

Not very interesting to look at, eh?  Part of the reason I found it so tricky was because we couldn't decide what to hang.  Until I finally stopped trying to look for the perfect piece of art, and started thinking more about the things that were important or special to us. 

Months ago I started compiling all of the things that meant something to us and slowly a nice little collection began to form.  As with many projects in our house, we get them started, then stall out or get distracted with something else.  So the framed artwork sat on a chair in our living room for a couple of weeks.  Two weekends ago we finally got to putting them up! ... And now I'm finally getting to posting about it haha

Tracing the frames onto paper makes it so much easier to get the placement of a gallery wall just how you want it.  Not a step to be skipped, I say...

Crazy how different the paint colour looks from night to day!  The window in the middle is the original window from our kitchen. 

Here's a closer look at it all...

A cute engagement card from a family member that I backed onto some cute scrapbooking paper

One of our "congrats on your new first home" cards (it got a little beat up in the drawer it was banished to over the last 3 years, but I think it's sweet)

A special picture of my sister and I as kids sharing a towel at the beach

My sweetest little niece, Lily - her frame came banged up!  I'll have to get a little paint on there to mask it

An old fish scale Darryl picked up at a consignment shop, and a horseshoe I inherited from my Great Aunt Bobby

The next three pictures are of some super cool things we found hidden in the lath and plaster during demo.  The above picture has some bread/milk/egg notes for the home deliveries that used to be left in our milk box.  I wish those services still existed here...Also, a Modish Fur Co. business card and a Thank You/Merry Christmas card from the local paper boy.  Everything is backed on some old sandpaper we also found.

This frame is filled with a bunch of Toronto Star payment stubs (aside from the few my Papa wanted as nostalgic pieces), ranging from 1952-1964 - also backed on some of the same sandpaper as above.

And what makes it even more super cool is that at our garage sale last month, we got to chatting to a customer who turned out to have lived in our next door neighbour's house for a few decades and she knew the lady who lived in our house from 1930 until at least the 70s.  That lady is Mrs. Martin, which is so funny to me, because it is just one letter off from my last name!  Coincidence....or meant to be??  So these are Mrs. Martin's bread and paper stubs.  Coolio.

Hopefully we'll be able to add a few more things to the wall as we go along!

What kind of art do you have hanging in your house....any favourites??  Do you have commitment issues to hanging stuff as well!?