Here’s this week’s item:

55. Put up art in the bathrooms

For the kids’ bathroom, I went with a simple set of photos I had from Burgaz:

In our bathroom, I put some butterflies (image coming).

But, really, the bathroom we use the most is the one downstairs. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got some wonderful prints from Kal Barteski, these were the four that didn’t go up in the living room.

I am sorry for the terrible quality of the photos. There’s no light at all in that room so it’s hard to get a high quality image.

Here is a closeup:

And another:

These are also tiny art and here are the ones in Kal’s site: 45, 31, 43, 47

I adore every single one of them and they make me happy each time I walk into my bathroom.

Here’s this week’s item:

15. Decorate my living room wall.

I’ve been dreaming about this project for a long time. I have this huge wall in my living room that was itching to get filled. I knew I wanted to put a lot of small prints there and I knew they were going to be from etsy but I spent a long time putting it off. When I finally bought all my prints, they then waited another few months for my mom to arrive and help me hang them.

I intended to hang them all next to each other but that wasn’t so easy and as they ended up being all over the place, I decided I liked that better so here we are. I couldn’t get a photo without glare as I have so many windows in this room so I got a few closeups and I will list each of the prints.

Here’s a faraway shot to give you a sense of the space. There will be a much larger TV coming very soon which is why the left side is open space.

here’s a closer shot of the wall:

When I was trying to decide what to put on here, I wanted all of the images to be happy and full of love. I wanted them to be fun and uplifting. A few months before I bought the rest, I had bought six prints from Kal Barteski whom I adore. Two of them were for this wall. This is one of them:

And the elephant in this photo is the other:

Here are the links to the two prints: Tiny Art 104 and Tiny Art 91

Other pieces you see in the above image are these lovely giraffes, trees one and two(not in this photo) from Stephanie Fizer, Mistletoe kisses, and the awesome boy chairs.

After I bought Kal’s prints, I saw Marisa, who is one of my favorite artists, put up this set of postcards and I bought them as soon as they were up. So now I had all the colorful art I wanted. I went looking for some blue and green and quieter images that made me fee happy.

I fell in love with all of the trees in Once Upon a Paper but finally settled on this clean, green one.

I bought several postcards, too. One of which was this love one.

I adore angels which is why I bought this top right print called Angels the minute I saw it:

And another one was this little girl (I love this artist.) Another print I don’t have as closeups is My umbrella which has incredible texture. And finally, I have a postcard that says you are so loved in green. Since loved is my word for 2010, I thought it was only fitting.

On the opposite wall, I hung this wonderful painting by Picasso that I adore:

And that’s it for the living room. More next week.

Here’s this week’s items:

54. Decorate the staircase landings.

On the way from the guest room to upstairs, we have these huge landings (or whatever you call them) and I had no idea what to put there. They are really tall and I do not have a ladder that can reach there so I couldn’t hang anything and after a bunch of thinking and organizing, here’s what we ended up with:

Here’s how it looks when you’re downstairs, walking up:

and a painting I hung on the wall below. It’s of two mosques.

and here is a closeup of the left side with a glass vase and long long flowers:

and on the right side we put two candles with holders and a clock and a small flower for some color:

That’s it for the stairs. Next week is my bedroom.

Here’s this week’s item:

3. Renew my wardrobe

I’ll admit, I thought this was one of the few items that would not get done in 2010. I have always felt that I shouldn’t buy anything new until I lose the weight I’ve wanted to lose. I’ve felt overweight as long as I can remember and having Nathaniel didn’t do much to alleviate this problem. Even though I’ve not been dieting or exercising in the least, I’ve also “punished” myself by not allowing myself to buy anything new. The fact that I abhor shopping didn’t hurt either.

When we moved to this house, almost a year ago, I bought two pairs of jeans and six long-sleeve T’s from GAP and that’s all I’ve been wearing ever since. Literally. Until my mom came, I hadn’t even walked into my closet except to get shoes. I was avoiding it like the plague.

And then I went away on the retreat which caused a profound change in me.

I’ve always hated having my picture taken. I think many photographers do. Anyhow, I really did. I’ve had issues with my looks for as long as I can remember. And this retreat was no exception. I just didn’t want to be photographed. For the first day or two I wore my hair up and didn’t wear any makeup (like always) but then one day, I wore my hair down and one of the girls grabbed my camera to take a photo. The shot was mostly of Nathaniel but I could see my hair in it. And it completely freaked me out.

I cannot even tell you why exactly but that one image caused a complete switch in my brain. My hair, my face, my clothes, they all disgusted me. I mean that literally. I decided that was it and I would not continue to look this way for one more minute. Yes, ideally I would exercise and eat better and look better, etc. And I do plan on doing those things, but I wanted to look and feel better about myself right this minute. Without waiting for the pounds to come off. This wasn’t something hypothetical for me. Not like “I should really do this..” but it was tangible and it was going to happen.

So I made a list of things I wanted to buy, do, and change. Here’s my list from that week (not in order):

1. Cut off my hair. My hair was so long and big that I often wore it up and when it was down, it looked like a lion’s mane. It was often unkempt and I just did not like it. I wanted to cut it so it had to be worn down and I would be more tempted to take care of it. Luckily I happened to have a hairdresser appointment two weeks from then so I got it dyed, cut, and highlighted all in one appointment and I love it. It’s so much easier now.

2. Buy and use basic makeup I don’t wear makeup because I tend to never remove it and it’s too much work. But I like the way it makes me look when I wear little bits of it. So I bought a new mascara (cause mine was many many years old) and I now wear some blush, mascara and lipstick when I go out. Not at home unless we have visitors.

3. Get rid of clothes in closet and shoes It may not seem it, but mom and I got rid of just about everything in my closet and left only the things that fit well and things I loved.

4. Buy a new bra I’ve been nursing for a year and plan to nurse for one more but the nursing bras suck. And the old ones don’t fit just yet. So I bought a pretty, high quality, new bra and once I stop nursing, I will buy another few if I need to. It plays a strong role in looking good, if you have large breasts like I do.

5. Buy a few new clothes I love Thanks to Debi, I finally realized that Anthropologie had some tops that I might love and could fit me even though I am not a size 0. I went with my mom and we bought five new and beautiful tops. I love them and I love wearing them. Even though they are on the fancy side, I will wear them to the movies and to when I pick up David, etc. I don’t care if it’s too fancy. They are for me.

6. Jewelry I asked my mom to bring me some earrings and bracelets if she had any (my mom used to design jewelry) and I put on some earrings I love and a new bracelet with some noisy, dangly bits. She also brought me a new watch. I love them all.

And here we are. This is what I looked like last week. This is my hair after I did it myself (not from the hairdresser who always does an amazing job.)

And one with my awesome parents.

I still need to work on the emotional side of it all but I feel so much better and nothing I did took a lot of effort or money. But I will continue to work on it. I want to look better but most significantly, I want to feel better.

Here’s this week’s item:

45. Make an inspiration board for my crafting/design area.

The first step here was finding the right board. My craft space is in the living room so I don’t have a lot of space to hang a board in and the cork board I had was too big. I wanted to buy one that I saw in Pottery Barn but it was a little more than I wanted to pay so I got this one instead. It’s not on sale anymore but it was $15 when I bought it. It’s just the right size and it’s a quiet beige.

The board came, I hung it on the wall and spent a lot of time trying to decide what to do. Then I decided that since I am really inspired by fabric and stitching and people like Rebecca Sower and Pam Garrison right now, I’d make the board a stitching sampler.

I measured interfacing in the exact size of the board and then started stitching random bits of fabric on to it.

I didn’t pay too much attention, just lined up the ones I liked and kept stitching.

After a long while, I was done. I had the whole thing covered.

Then I added some lace.

And then started stitching a bit. Still practicing my French Knots. I still screw up more often than I get it right.

I added some more details here and there.

I then pinned it on top of the linen board:

My plan is to add a lot more stuff. Every now and then as I feel like it. I want to add buttons, dangle things, stitch, add beads, I have a lot of plans. I will share more photos as I work on this but it’s already inspiring me just to look at all that fabric I love.

Here it is with my sampler and the hearts on there:

Here’s the thing I worked on last week:

34. Take a workshop on something I’ve never done

As I already mentioned, I took the Freestyle Embroidery class from Teresa McFayden. Before her class, I only knew how to do a backstitch and I’d done a few french knots. After having done Rebecca’s hearts week, I wanted more so this workshop came at the perfect time.

Here’s the finished sampler:

The stitching I did on the first week ended up in the WIL book I made so here’s that one:

I then redid some of the things on the big sampler but not all of them. Here are some details:

closer-up:

back of the little dangly butterfly.

I stitched this happy yellow fabric on the back.

Here’s another look at the final product:

I absolutely loved doing this workshop. Even though my arm is still hurting.