A Day Late and A Dollar Short

I did it. I took the "Pinterest Challenge." I am WAY late, I know, but sometimes it takes me a little longer to get things done than the average person. I like to make sure that I think my decisions through long enough to know that I love whatever I am doing. I am kind of like that when it comes to decorating or anything really. Ask my husband. {No wait don't.}

Anyway, one of my favorite blogs to read and {stalk} is "Young House Love." The couple from this blog are decorating "gurus" in my opinion and are so gusty when it comes to taking on challenges (like remodeling a bathroom...no big deal, right?) Anyway, they have so many unique projects going on all the time in their home and while their previous home was by far my favorite, their new house is starting to shape up too!

Sherry, from Young House Love, with the help of three others, decided that it was time to stop "pinning" our favorite things on Pinterest and actually do something! So everyone was encouraged to choose a picture they had pinned and make it happen in their home. I have been wanting to create a collage wall in my family room for so long, so I took the challenge.

My inspiration came from here.

I loved that this was done in a hallway. It really added a lot to this seemingly simple passageway through their home. My idea would not happen in our hall, but instead the destination for my wall collage was our family room.

This picture also peaked my interest. So I began. I set out to take the challenge.

I started with a few frames from Ikea. I liked the Ribba style frame so I looked up the measurements online and cut basic computer paper to the size of the various frames. I laid them all out and played with the arrangement until I got what I thought I wanted. This is what it looked like on our floor.

My next step was to put the arrangement on the wall. I went ahead and used the paper cut outs that I had already made and just transferred it to the wall. I played around with it again once it was up to make sure that I really LOVED it. I used painter's tape to kind of outline the edge of the arrangement and then to attached the paper to the wall.

I then lived with it for a few days on the wall to make sure that it was exactly how I wanted it. John was also out of town when I got all adventurous so I wanted to wait until he could see it too. Once he came home and approved (literally a couple hours after he pulled into our driveway) I took off to Ikea. It's not far from here so it didn't take long to get there, find my frames, and head back home.

My intentions were good to go ahead and put them all up on the wall that night but John was asleep on the couch when I got home (he had just spent the past two nights with his golf team and was exhausted) so I waited very patiently for the sun to rise.

Today I was finally able to hang my frames. I took a deep breath and used the paper cut outs to measure the exact location of each nail/screw. (I am terrible at this by the way...if you take the frames down you may find a stray hole or two...shhh...don't tell Johnny!)

The final product looks a little something like this.

I was really proud of how it turned out. It looked so much better than the much too small six black frames I had here prior to this transformation.

My next "challenge" is to fill all those frames. I already have a few ideas...thanks to Pinterest of course! Here are a few ideas I may try to DIY in the next few days; before school really starts creeping into my life for good.

I am really excited about this in particular, since we have three different maps for each of these times in our life.

I love these numbers and would like to find something similar for our house number to put in three frames with maybe a navy background?

I love these prints but am having a hard time creating something similar. We'll see...