A little more living room

This Christmas I decided to hang our Christmas cards on some old shutters we had the in the basement.  I got my inspiration from this blog post, which is full of fun ideas.  I didn't take any pictures of the painting process, but it was pretty simple.  The shutters were white, which looked kind of boring.  I dug thru my paint pots in the basement and found a nice brown . . . one coat later they were a very glossy, shiny, shimmering, oily looking brown.

Yikes!

So then I decided to go with some leftover blue, and got lucky.  I applied one coat of the flat blue, and got a great effect, tiny streaks of brown showing thru.  Exactly what I didn't know I was trying to do!  Love it when you get lucky like that.

Now, in my efforts to de-Christmas the house (it is the end of January, after all), I wanted to keep the shutters up, but needed to replace the Christmas cards with something else . . . a little scavenging around in my craft room and basement and I was ready.

A few favorite photos . . .

. . . momentos from my marathon in Alaska . . .

. . . our wedding invitation . . .

. . . and sand dollars we plucked off the beach on vacation.

Before . . . kind of sad, I know.  Time to be perked up!  

After . . . I have never been much of a scrapbooker, but I enjoyed putting together my Scrappy Shutters.

The view from the entry way now . . . I can just see a nice little table under the shutters . . .