More Ideas From Pinterest

Here are a couple other things I've been working on from Pinterest. Just so you know, my New Year's resolution is to give Pinterest up cold turkey. I just can't afford to keep looking.

The Pinterest Idea: Hand stitch your route from a recent trip on a map and frame it.

The Real Life Result: My map was way more colorful than the Pinterest example and the red stitching is barely visible to the naked eye. Even the guy who helped me frame it and who was handling it with his, like, hands didn't notice the stitching until I pointed it out. In his defense he quickly recovered by saying the red dotted line just looked like part of the map. Okay.

The Pinterest Idea: Make a cute collage of photos and items on an empty wall.

The Real Life Result: I think I did pretty good with this one. I even used another Pinterest-found trick which was to use taped-together pieces of waxed paper to create a hanging template. Simply lay your giant piece of waxed paper over your frames (lay them out on the floor the way you want them on the wall), make little marks where the nails should go, then tape the waxed paper to the wall and nail right through it. Don't forget to rip the waxed paper template off the wall in dramatic fashion and wad it up in a giant, waxy ball. 

I do have a few issues with my wall arrangement (the missing 4x4 picture on the top row, for starters) but I realize no one cares, so I'll just shut up.

The Pinterest Idea: Create a low floral arrangement on a buffet or sideboard with matching lamps and a mirror (or flat screen TV)

The Real Life Result: (Poinsettias pending) I could not find a low, long box to save my life, so opted for 3 low, short boxes. I found a close-enough-matching lamp for $7 at Goodwill (I'd been looking for months thank you very much) and decided to hang a picture of the Savior in front of the mirror. This was me going rogue and not a Pinterest idea. I don't know if this type of thing is "done" but I like it. I've seen people do it with wreaths and I feel it has some seasonal significance, that as we look in the mirror we see the Savior and can "reflect" on how we are living our lives in His service, or something like that. 

There's just one, small problem.

I broke the mirror when I went to rehang it. I know I look calm taking the photo, but trust me. I was devastated. Then I was sick to my stomach, depressed, angry, and then just sad. I really liked this mirror. And I really liked my idea to put the picture of the Savior in front of it. And the bottom line is, it was completely my fault it broke. It was an accident, yes, but a preventable one. And I had a moment where knew I should have prevented it, but didn't. 

Argh!