Tiny hats, tall tractors and "throwing crap up on the wall"

After last weekend's gorgeous weather I was kinda excited to get out and work in the yard but instead we had snow and puddles.  Luckily there were a few birthday parties to attend (the proportions/angle of this photo crack me up - tiny hat, giant head and tiny hand):

And a farm/ranch show to check out:

 The petting zoo was there and Matthew was pretty excited.  They had lots of new, new babies to check out:

 Meanwhile Catherine's been busy moving and grooving.  Her new trick is flipping over the second her bottom touches the car seat.  She then arches her back making it nearly impossible to get her to sit without some tears.

It was also a good weekend to do some preliminary scoping of new (to us) cars since James' Exploder is on its last legs.  Matthew dressed up for the event.  Very ganster with his mardi gras beads with mirrored bling.

As always the kiddos enjoy their books:

And Catherine enjoys waking up daddy:

(unfortunately she doesn't like my phone's flash so these super adorable pics are crazy grainy)

The big project for the weekend was doing more hanging of art and stuff on the walls.  We've almost got all of the art James and I "collected" up, so I started on a few projects.  Here's the photos near our front door.  I blurred out the addresses but basically each frame has a picture of our house and then the address and years we lived there.  Some fun memories all in about $8 worth of cheap frames.

Grandma Jennie was ahead of her time with her plate collection which we then converted to a smorgasbord of family photos.  What I referred to as "throwing crap up on a wall" is now stylishly called a "gallery wall".  So, because we're totally hip and cool, we put up a "gallery wall" this weekend :-)   It's been a great way to consolidate some random stuff I keep moving around the house, not knowing how to display it but not wanting to get rid of it.  With $3.50 worth of spray paint I painted the frames to match and give it cohesion (or some other cool word they'd use on HGTV) and everything else we had lying around the house.  First up are these bears that both James and I picked up on independent trips to AK.  They make a nice set (and now the cats can't knock them around and further break them).  The picture's a piece of art made by a former student.  Love the colors and love the reminder of that kid.  I hope he's doing something amazing now. 

 Then there's a basket from the restaurant where James and I had a crazy fancy dinner the day we got engaged, a Christmas card from Biosphere 2, and on the shelf (L-R) something grandma Jennie machined during her Rosie the Riveter days, a coal miner lamp from Papa (or papa's family) and a steel ball from US Steel marked with the day Papa retired.

 We also decided to shadow box one of our pep band vests with some of our combined favorite buttons and paraphernalia from Pep Band:

 And I put up a quick wedding silhouette surrounded by the lyrics to our first dance that I threw together in Word and printed on generic copy paper, a mask carved by one of my former students, Matthew's first handprint ornament and a neat chickadee print I found somewhere. 

A chunk of shag carpeting (that I framed for James' birthday) and some old wooden blocks of my father's also made it on the wall.

Other goodies include James' autographed SG-1 photo, some plates from both grandmother's, old guns, an old license plate and a vine wreath from James' family's properties in addition to the butterflies and wedding shadow box I made earlier.  The biggest project was the giant family print in the center which I had made for $3.  It's just an engineer's print (aka cheap B&W) from Staples put in a painted poster frame that we've moved around since college.  I've given James a lot of grief about these things and they turned out to be perfect and saved me a lot of headache (all the tutorials about doing this involved modge podge and other things*).     There's a few banding issues in the printing when you're up close but considering it wasn't a high res image to begin with I think it's awesome and I can't beat the price.  We still have a few ideas of things to add to take it up the wall, but so far I love it.  It's quirky and fun and adds something to the very blank, very overwhelming wall we've been staring at for a while.  

 The Matthew on a hill photo isn't as awesome in B&W as it was in color but I still like it.  Don't worry, all those great family photos are waiting on my next project, a geneaology wall for downstairs which I'm excited to start next.  Also, I believe that while our things were in storage there must have been some hanky-panky going on in our art/photo boxes.  I feel like I have frames coming out of my ears so who knows what weird things I may frame next.