trash to treasure!

There is nothing that brings me greater joy than transforming something old into something new. Recently I snagged an old beat up surf board from my husband Andy and transformed it into art for our living room wall. Never underestimate the power of a little paint and creativity!

ocean themed gallery wall

About every six months I get an uncontrollable itch to move things around in our house. I'm a MAJOR nester and I've been like this for as long as I can remember! In fact I can remember being a kid constantly moving my bedroom furniture. Recently I got that old familiar feeling and decided to do some major cleaning, organizing and changing our living room space around. The biggest change I made was to create an ocean themed gallery wall in our living room. 

The ocean plays a huge role in our lives- it is where we go to explore, pray, celebrate, exercise, connect and play. And since I come from a surfing family, we have lots of photos and surfing paraphernalia around. I thought it would be fun to use some of my favorite photos to create an ocean themed gallery wall. I started by printing the photos (I use a Cannon Pixma Pro-10). While I love color, I tried to select photos that had a color theme- lots of bright white with pops of subtle blues and greens. Then I framed everything in white frames.

Next, Andy hung an alaia surfboard that he recently shaped. An alaia is a thin, round nosed, square tailed surfboard ridden in pre-20th century Hawaii made from wood. The board was so pretty that I thought it would make a neat focal point for the wall. Andy made some sturdy wood hooks for the board to sit in and easily be removed when he uses it.

Then I arranged the framed photos beneath the board and called it good!

I love how bright and white this simple change has made in the living room. I also love being surrounded by all things from the sea!

living room work space

When the seasons change, I have a tradition of changing the house around (it's kinda an uncontrollable impulse). Fall is here and rain will be coming to the Oregon Coast which means we will be spending more time inside which also means we need some better family work space. 

Recently I moved around our living room to relocated our large white desk to the wall and set up a clean and simple work space that we all could use for different projects

Since I love changing our furniture and decor around, I have learned over time that it's better to invest in neutral pieces of furniture that can be accented with trendy colors, pattern and accessories. 

1. We've had 6 of these Baxton plastic accent chairs for the last couple of years and I love using them around the house. They are clean, modern and retro and are really comfortable!

2. These nickel plated Barometer work lamps from IKEA are perfect for our work space.

3. One of the best purchases we made about five years ago was a white Besta Burs desk from IKEA. It is big but long and skinny enough to work in different places. Over the years, I've used it as an entry way desk, a sofa table and a work desk. 

Since I added the long desk to this wall, we suddenly had a big empty space which was perfect for an engineer print. An engineer print is a GIANT print for cheap and they only come in black and white. You can get them at Staples, Fed Ex, Kinkos but my print is from Photojojo and it measure 3ft x 4ft. 

When you live with a surfer there is always old or broken surfboards laying around and I used one of Andy's old boards and transformed it into art to hang above the engineer print.

So far we are loving this space- it is a great little change to our living room that will get us through the fall and winter with a little more space.