Projects Galore

This weekend I decided to take on a few projects. Projects which meant we had to take a trip out to Ikea, woo!

Project #1 - Use last years Chinese flower calendar to make pictures for the house.

I really wanted to find a way to keep my wall calendar from last year. I love the artwork but I thought it was kind of silly to keep the calendar once the year was over. That's when I thought it might be kind of neat to take the artwork from the calendar and put it in frames. While we were at Ikea this weekend, I picked up a few sets of these because they can be painted pretty easily.

The calendar:



The frames I purchased:



I pulled the binding out of the calendar (staples in this case) and picked out the pictures that I favored. I then used the "glass" part of the frame (which is actually plastic because the frames are from Ikea) and traced around it on the part of each print that I liked best. After that, all I had to do was cut and put everything together!



The result!



Pretty simple and easy project! I also like to think that I wasted a little less paper this way too! I'm pretty sure I'm going to spray these frames black, I think the colors in the prints will pop a little more with the black border.

Project #2 - Create my own desk/working station

I got a pretty crazy idea in my head that I needed my own desk. We have the office and it has a desk in it but that's pretty much Rodney's territory. My laptop stays on the dining table (where I plug it in at night) and I wanted a better place to store it, along with a better place for my cell phone, iPod, all of my crafting stuff ( yes I do other things besides bake!)...

I needed something simple, something small. I found just the thing I was looking for at Ikea this weekend. I purchased this desk. It's perfect and fits nicely in the corner of our room. Most of our bedroom furniture is black but I decided to go with a white desk for a little bit of contrast. Rodney thought this was a strange idea but I think it looks pretty neat. We also bought two lack shelves in black to go above the desk. I grabbed a few white boxes and various other things to fill the shelves.

I'm still getting it all together but I'll be sure to post some pictures in the next day or two!