DIY Decor

One of my favorite past times has been creating my own decor for our home.  Until now our walls were covered with "the shrine to us," and I really wanted to get away from that.  Some pictures are great.  Every inch of wall space being taken up by a wedding/engagement/fun times picture is not.  Using blogs and pinterest, I set out to change that and I think I have been pretty successful.  I knew I wanted a red living room, and I've always loved yellow kitchens.  I figured I might as well complete the primary color theme and do blue too.  So I ended up with a red living room, blue kitchen, and yellow dining area.  I know it sounds like a kindergarten classroom gone wrong, but I've worked hard to keep it subtle and tasteful.  Here's some of what I've done so far in the way of decor:

When I was in junior high I was pretty involved in art class.  My favorite medium was pencil, and I recently "stole" my artwork from my mom to display in my home.  The paintings were done more recently with my mom and my sister-in-law at a place called Painting With a Twist (which I highly recommend if you have one in your area).  My favorite picture is actually the white one in the middle of my hands, which is why it got its own close up.

The next two pictures are of my abstract art paint chip project, which if you're on Facebook you'll know exactly what I'm talking about!  It took me many, many trips to Wal-Mart and Home Depot to steal chips.  To this day I have a hard time walking by the paint department without picking some up!  I have another project in the works that will go on either side of this one when it's all said and done.  So this one is to be continued...

My red living room.  The flower painting is not DIY.  I bought that one at a killer price at one of my new favorite stores, Kirkland's.

My kitchen doesn't really have wall space, but I wanted to bring in some blue.  So I hung up my Texas license   plate with its blue lettering by the stove.  I already had a cobalt blue KitchenAid. And I'm currently collecting blue things to put on top of the cabinets.  So far I have a grand total of 3 things that I just stuck up there without any real rhyme or reason.  Someday it'll all come together.

My yellow eat-in kitchen.  I can't paint the walls with our open floor plan.  I just don't think it would work.  Plus the neutral walls have really grown on me as they let me do whatever I want with the rest of the room.  So using scrapbook paper, Styrofoam, and ribbon I made these panels to bring yellow into the room.  (And you can see our awesome, big new kitchen table too.)

*Just as a side note, my picture frame project is still in-progress.  It got a bit neglected due to the other projects I've started, but I hope to finish it soon.  All I need is to decorate two more frames and get my hands on an 8 x 10 Tenney family photo...