Got the Painting Bug!

One thing that I always hated about renting was my inability to change things.  I LOVE color, and the white/taupe walls of my apartments always drove me crazy.  I knew that when I bought a house, I was going to PAINT. =)

You may remember that first we painted our tv room red.

And then I got bored one weekend and decided to paint the bathroom purple.

This weekend I took the shitty weather as a sign that I should finally paint the master bedroom... something that I have been sitting on for several months.  And, of course, I LOVE it!

Here's the before:

And here's my beautiful, chocolate, "after":

What do you think?  Beige rug?

Several weeks ago I saw a blog posting of a DIY project that I absolutely loved... a framed tribute to travel.

I LOVE travel.  I HATE DIY projects. lol  But, this one I thought that I could do... or, at least, something similar.  So, one day a few weeks ago, armed with Michael's coupons, left over white house paint, and a couple of fresh printer cartridges of ink, I set out to create my own.

Like I said, a few WEEKS ago I started this project (not a DIYer... no time, energy, patience or creativity... for the most part).  And, this weekend, I am FINALLY done.  And, after painting the bedroom, was ready to start my wall of travel (I painted a couple of extra frames so that the project could grow as we continued our adventures):

I decided that, instead of just framing the maps, I wanted to also frame photos of us enjoying the places that we've traveled.  So, for each of our destinations (Hawaii, Vancouver, BC, Las Vegas, New Zealand, Melbourne) I found a map of the area as well as several photos, printed them up in the appropriate sizes, and framed them (excuse the crappy photos... it's hard to take pictures of pictures!):

I'm pretty happy with the way that this turned out... and am SOO looking forward to watching our wall grow! =)