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arplis · 4 years

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Arplis - News: My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 49 of 52

My 22 Goals for 2019

Goal #1 Spend More Time Doing What I Love

Red alert people, RED ALERT. It was 6 degrees this morning when I woke up. SIX!!! That.Is.Chilly. The Girl and I were going to walk Lucy on the beach this morning but those plans have been scraped. Gaaaa. I think if its 6 degrees outside, all bets are off and you can most certainly declare it a pajama day. Whos with me on this?

Goal #2 Garden, Garden, Garden

Garden are done for the year. Yipee!

Goal #3 Plant an Orchard {Calling it Quits on this one.}

Lemon baby #3 is on the way and we are patiently awaiting her arrival.

Goal #4 Gussy Up the Potting Shed Done!

I gussied up the potting shed at our old house, but I would like to add some sort of potting station to the backyard here somewhere, but Im not sure where I would put it yet.

I did come across this photo on Author Susan Branchs Instagram page though of a picture she tooth at Colonial Williamsburg. Isnt it cute? I think I need one of those.

Goal #5 Grow Enough Extra Vegetables, Eggs and Flowers to Earn $1500 at my little roadside vegetable stand.

It was totally my intention to grow a ton of fruits and vegetables to sell at the farm-stand when I made my list of goals for 2019 last winter, but then we moved. So, that whole goal was sort of a bust. I do miss it though.

Goal #6 Finish Every Single Unfinished Rug Hooking Project in My Pattern Bin + 10 Things from back Issues of Magazines/Books Ive Been Meaning to Make.

While I didnt add any new finished hooked rug pieces in my Etsy shop this past week, I did hook 4 totally new rugs {1 of which will become a kit and 2 will be offered as patterns} as well as hand dyed a bunch of wool {that I was able to get listed in my Etsy shop}.

I have decided to go back to my old schedule of only listing new hooked rugs items on the first Friday of every month for next year as it seems less stressful to me. It allows me more time to hook, rather than stopping every few days to take photo, write up description and then post a single piece online. Doing it all in one big swoop seems less chaotic to me.

73 rugs in my pattern bin {now down to 16} < SO CLOSE!

183 hooked flowers {finished 150, now down to 33}

10 things from back issues of magazines {finished 0}

Goal #7 Create 12 New Rug Hooking Patterns {with at least half of them being large ones} DONE!

So far this year Ive added 12 new rug hooking patterns and 14 beginner rug hooking kits to my Etsy shop. I just added Santa and Rudy 1892 yesterday and am hoping to squeeze one more kit in before the end of the year.

New rug hooking patterns Ive created and added to My Etsy Shop this year:

Santa and Rudy 1892

Tullia and Thomas Turkey

Double Nantucket Whale Runner

Miss Henny and Penny

Miss Penny

Simple Kitty

Primitive Flowers

2 Fat Cats

Annabells Big Day

Old Fashioned Double Tulip

Fat Brown Hen

Busy Little Bee

Queen Bee

Rug Hooking Kits

Busy Little Bee {in 2 different colors}

Folk Art Heart

Small Nantucket Whale

Primitive Crow

Miss Robin {in 2 different colors}

Simple Kitty

Primitive Flowers

Sunflowers

A Basket of Spring Posies

Fat Brown Hen

Chickys Garden

Goal #8 Split and Stack 2 Cords of Wood for Next Winter

All that firewood! We sold it.

Goal #9 Do Something with the 5,002 Photos on My Phone

Currently at 2415 Back up to 2565.

Goal #10 -Lose the Muffin Top Done!

Sweet digity!

Goal #11 Run, Walk or Crawl a 5k, 10k, Half Marathon and Marathon

As long as its not pouring rain tomorrow. The Girl and I are on for the Half Marathon. Wish us luck!

Goal #12 Read or Listen to 26 New Books {21 down, 5 to go}

No new books this week but we are planning a trip to the library later this week.

Books Ive Read or Listened to So Far This Year:

Marilla of Green Gables #1 Still my favorite

The Great Alone #2

The Aviators Wife #3

Before We Were Yours #4

Secrets of a Charmed Life #5

Whered You Go, Bernadette #6

Carnegies Maid #7

The Gown #8

Unbroken #9

Drama#10

The Alice Network #11

The Shape of Mercy #12

Wills Red Coat #13

Big Little Lies #14

Mr. Churchills Secretary

Born to Run

I Feel Bad About My Neck

Bunny Mellon {Doesnt count because it was my second time}

On Writing {Doesnt count because it was my third time}

Walden

Finders Keepers

Delicious!

50 Things to Do in Maine Before You Die

Following Atticus

Goal #13 Try 52 New Recipes.

39 down, 13 recipes to go. We tried 2 new recipes this week. 1 was a dud and the other I will share on Tuesday. And its a good one!

Goal #14 Clean Up 52 Old Recipes on the Blog

9 down, 44 to go. Why did I make this goal? Note to self: Make fewer goals for next year.

Goal #15 Fill 100 Canning Jars 72 down, 28 to go.

I made a batch of Christmas Jam for gift giving PLUS I tried a new recipe {that was inspired by Mrs. HB} this past week and the HH and I loved it so much, that Ill be making another batch {or maybe 2} of it today {Ill share the recipe on Tuesday}.

So far this year Ive I canned:

9 Jars of..

6 jars Christmas Jam

7 jars Spiced Pomegranate Jelly

7 jars Peach Jam

7 jars of Strawberry Jam

15 jars of Carrot Cake Jam

15 jars of Spiced Pear Jam

4 jars of Almond Pears.

Goal #16 Finish Furnishing Our House

We finished the roman shades for the kitchen nook and kitchen window. I plan on taking a break from making roman shades for the next month so I can finish making kits for my Etsy shop and paint out the entire kitchen area as well as finish a couple of art projects for the walls.

Goal #17 52 Dates with the HH {44 down, 8 to go}

The HH and I went on 2 date days this past week and one of them was to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village for their Shaker Christmas Fair and it was so overwhelming, we left after 5 minutes.

Overwhelming in the sense that although we could tell there was going to be a lot of people at the event by the distance we had to walk to the village, what we werent expecting was that once we walked in the doors of the trustees office {where the craft fair was being held}, it was SHOULDER to SHOULDER.

Like, being at a rock concert crowded. The HH didnt even make it 2 feet in before walking out and it took me nearly 5 minutes to get from the entrance and through 3 rooms and back out the door again without even being able to look or pick up anything it was so crowded. It was nuts. And totally not in the calm, welcoming Shaker spirit and all we wanted to do was leave. And so we did.

I do want to go back though at some point to visit the museum, but it will have to be an ordinary weekday with nothing on the event calendar, thats for sure.

Goal #18 Take One Adult Education Class Done {Ive taken 3!}

Block Printing Class with my neighbor.

Spoon Carving Classwith Heather.

Mini pottery lesson {I loved it! and now I want to sign up for a full class}

Goal #19 Secret Holiday Project{s}

Block print towels

Seed packet wreaths

Tea Bag Trees

Goal #20 Create 12 Wowie Zowie Party Platters

8 down, 4 to go. We are planning on making #9 tonight!

Goal #21 Visit 12 General Stores

10 down 2 to go. We visited a new country store yesterday!! The kind that offers human made {and local} baskets to customers to do their shopping with. Ill tell you all about it next week.

H.B. Provisions in Kennebunk, Maine

Chases Daily {I think it should count}

Squam Lake Marketplace

Harrisville General Store

Dodges Store in New Boston, New Hampshire

Zebs General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire

Dan and Whits in Norwich, Vermont

Husseys General Store in Windsor, Maine

Goal #22 Compete with Carole.. Get on My Front Door Game On

Would you believe not a single person walking by {or even a neighbor} has made a comment about the leg lamp in the window? I think theyre showing restraint, while my husband keeps telling me that they are in such awe of it, they just dont know what to say.

Ummmm Okay.

Front Door Bling Ive Made So Far This Year to Compete with Carole:

Late January : Valentine Heart

Late February : Shamrock

Late March : Giant Carrot

May: White wave petunia hanging basket

June/July: Tin Star and Flag Bunting

August : Sunflower

September: Indian corn and pumpkins

October: Pumpkins and spinner do hickeys

November: Indian corn and big pumpkins

December: Leg lamp and nutcrackers in the window and giant Christmas balls on the porch

**************

How about YOU? What are your goals for 2019? If you told us about them HERE, check in! We want to know how you are doing. Because seriously, its so much easier to get those goals checked off your list when you have people rooting for you!

Have a great day everyone,

Mavis

P.S. If you are looking for a last minute gift for neighbor or a friend, I still have a few ornaments left in my Etsy shop and you can find them all HERE. UPDATE: The barred rock chicken is sold out but there are a few more chicken ornaments HERE.

You can read more about my 22 goals for 2019 HERE.

Have a Great Day!

The post My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 49 of 52 appeared first on One Hundred Dollars a Month.

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My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 48 of 52

My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 47 of 52

My 22 Goals for 2019 Week 46 of 52

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ceaselesswatchboy · 7 years

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A brief history of the wall behind my bed

On one side I have a cross-stitched poem my great aunt made for me when I was a baby, and even though I don't believe in god anymore I can't take it down. Above it I have two posters from the broadway series in Aurora, Tommy and Cats. Surrounding the poem I have pictures of me and my family, my favorite of which is a picture of me and JT making silly faces at a restaurant in Chicago. On the other side I have a bunch of prints and stuff I have bought for myself. One is a lily pads picture I took out of a magazine three years ago. Above it I have postcards that say things like 'whale of a time'. I have a print of Georgia O'Keeffe's Red Hills with Flowers that I got from The Art Institute. Next to it there's a print of a pinup girl that says 'you haven't even seen my bad side yet' that Maya got me for Christmas (I love Maya, she knows me so well.) Under those I have an Atlas of the world war from before WWII in a frame (I found it for 2 dollars in a shop in Gettysburg). Next to the atlas is a painting I got in NOLA when it was my birthday a couple years ago. It's rainbow and is a drawing of Metaru Cemetery. I have two little framed paper cut outs my friends from Taiwan brought me when they came to visit last year (I MISS THEM SO MUCH I REMEMBER WHEN JACK TOLD ME HE WAS MOVING BACK TO TAIWAN AND WHEN HE GOT HIS DOG AND WHEN HE BEAT ME AT CHESS FOR THE FIRST TIME I MISS YOU JACK AND CAROLINE). The last two things are another art piece from NOLA (this one is black and white and done in pen, it's a picture of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. The artist was very kind and had a conversation with me about Chicago) and tile art of a snow leopard I got at the Brookfield Zoo a couple years ago.

#I'm bored so I did this #sorry

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goarticletec-blog · 5 years

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We remember the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/we-remember-the-sega-dreamcast-20-years-on/

We remember the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on

The Dreamcast itself was pretty compact, but that controller! What a chunker.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

The Sega Dreamcast launched in Japan 20 years ago on Nov. 27, 1998. The system enjoyed a brief but memorable time in the limelight with some truly fantastic games and a few features that would inspire future consoles — it was the first console with built-in internet.

But ultimately a lack of third-party support, a somewhat underpowered architecture and the fact that the rival PlayStation 2 could play DVDs as well as games would mean a premature demise. None of that will stop us from remembering it fondly — or wishing for a Dreamcast Classic.

Morgan Little

I was in fifth grade, visiting a DisneyQuest while doing the whole Disney World thing, seeing the last gasps of 1990s interactive arcades, and there it was. That Sonic Adventure demo with the whale chase — amazing to watch and awful to play.

I wouldn’t spend any quality time with the Dreamcast until at least a year later, but seeing that showcase was astounding for the time. At that point I still just had a Genesis, so even a brief glimpse of Sonic looking halfway-decent in 3D was a revelation. And no, Sonic 3D Blast doesn’t count.

Though I never bought one myself, a good friend did, and it became the go-to console for sleepovers and wasted Saturdays. The mix of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power Stone, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and that terrible Chao Garden feature from Sonic Adventure 2 was more than enough to keep us playing that Dreamcast until long after it had died and everyone else moved on. Plus, its giant controllers were still better than the awful DualShock 2 on the PlayStation 2. That’s just a fact.

Now playing: Watch this: Remembering the Sega Dreamcast at 20

5:49

Scott Stein

I had every Sega system that was ever made. Yes, even the 32X. I was a Sega kid — the Master System with Superscope 3D glasses was my gift after getting appendicitis. While the Genesis was my favorite, the Dreamcast is a place of special memories. I was living in LA, working as a script reader and story editor, and playing amazing NFL 2K games to connect with my dormant feelings about the New York Jets. That NFL 2K game stunned me… it was the first TV-real sports game I’d ever seen. Crazy Taxi was my LA commuting therapy. I loved the weirdness of Chu Chu Rocket. And even more, I was obsessed with Seaman.

My first E3 I ever attended had the Dreamcast, and I saw the Leonard Nimoy-voiced fish-man in all its Lynchian horror. Seaman was so ahead of its time: It had a microphone I could speak to Seaman with. It was like if Alexa were a depressed cannibal fish. In my dusty little Sherman Oaks apartment, Seaman was my mystic surrealist aquarium. Along with the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, it was part of my cabinet of curiosities that made me dream of how strange art could be. Space Channel 5, the insanely real-feeling Shenmue, and yes, I owned Typing of the Dead. It was a great system of gaming oddities.

The Dreamcast was small and beautifully designed, had arcade-perfect games, and was my first real online gaming system. May it rest in peace in my mom’s basement.

Rez Infinite is a modernized version of the Dreamcast classic. Other than the graphics, not much else was changed.

GameSpot

Dan Ackerman

The Dreamcast was the first console launch I ever covered as a novice “games journalist” at the long-forgotten (but pioneering!) games-and-culture website UGO.com. My colleagues and I all shelled out for launch day bundles, and Soul Calibur was everyone’s instant favorite.

We all ended up playing a lot of conference room Soul Calibur with UGO’s most famous employee, former child star Gary Coleman. Gary was a total fiend for Soul Calibur, and regularly held court in our Park Avenue office, taking on all challengers and dispensing endless foul-mouthed trash talk. He was actually pretty good, and probably had an 8 out of 10 win ratio.

Other early Dreamcast highlights for me included Power Stone, Shenmue, a Resident Evil knockoff called Blue Stinger (I bet I’m the only one giving that a shoutout), and bizarre fish simulator Seaman. When my now-wife used the Dreamcast microphone attachment to tell Seaman she was going to eat him, he replied, “Or maybe I’m going to eat you.” If that’s not next-gen, I don’t know what is.

I’ve come back to the Dreamcast a few times since its 2001 discontinuation, talking about it on my old talking head video game web series Play Value (circa 2006), and taking a deeper dive for the Dreamcast’s 10th anniversary, which I wrote about here.

Would I buy a new “Dreamcast Classic” micro console? Definitely. Would I plug it in more than once or twice? Probably not.

Tim Stevens

My Dreamcast memories are a little different than most. Like Scott I was a Sega kid and, like Scott, I too owned (and still own) every Sega system. But my memories of the Dreamcast weren’t so much about gaming as they were about coding. Lots and lots and lots of coding.

I was in college studying computer science and writing when the Dreamcast dropped, and my dream was to combine those passions and get a gig in the videogame industry after graduation. It was time to pick a senior thesis, and so I blindly emailed some folks at Sega to see if there was any way I could get permission to write a simple game for their hot new console.

Amazingly, I got a response. As it turns out I would not be allowed to develop anything for the Dreamcast — the development hardware alone cost thousands of dollars and I was lucky if I could afford pizza on Friday night — but I was given access to the Visual Memory Unit developer kit. The VMU, you may remember, was the tiny, Game Boy-looking thing that slotted into the controller. It had a tiny, gray and black LCD, a four-way D-pad and a couple of buttons.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Games for the VMU were written in assembler, an arcane language I’d never been exposed to in my studies. If that weren’t daunting enough, the only documentation for the VMU kit was in Japanese, another language I didn’t speak. Despite all that I figured it out over the following few months, then toiled and toiled and toiled to write what would be the first — and to my knowledge only — multiplayer VMU game. You could, you see, connect two of the mini handhelds together at the top thanks to a cunning, reversible connector. So, I wrote a Pong-like game played vertically, with the ball traveling from one screen to the next, back and forth.

Developing that game, plus another simple, Simon-like game, consumed my senior year at school. The resulting code, when printed out for my final thesis presentation, filled a binder as big as a phone book. Along the way I learned enough about the game development industry to realize it wasn’t for me, but that project, just me and my text editor toiling for months, is still the programming project I look back upon most fondly.

The recently remastered version of Shenmue.

GameSpot

Jeff Bakalar

I was 17 when the Dreamcast launched and was working for a dotcom start-up run by three 21-year-olds. I remember the day it went on sale, one of the partners ordered it for same-day delivery from a service called UrbanFetch.

It arrived and we didn’t do any work for the rest of the day. It was just nonstop Ready 2 Rumble. I recall being instantly impressed with how crisp the visuals were. It was a level of fidelity I hadn’t ever seen before.

Everything seemed so fast, so advanced, so futuristic. The Dreamcast arrived in between the other console cycles, so it felt like we were getting a very early glimpse into what the rest of the competition would soon be offering.

I didn’t wind up owning my own Dreamcast until college, but I eventually fell in love with Sonic Adventure, problems and all. I played most of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil games on the Dreamcast too.

The Dreamcast will always have a place in my heart for its ridiculous memory card adapters, its mostly awful controller and the insane speed at which its disc reader would spin and adjust, like some kind of dot-matrix printer that went off the rails.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Jason Parker

I never actually owned a Dreamcast, but for a period in my life, I could not get enough of one game: Fighting Vipers 2. It was while I was in college and one of my friends had a Dreamcast, so when we were not out at night or studying, we’d spend hours fighting match after match.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t called Fighting Vipers 2 as far as I knew back then. My friend had a bootlegged copy on a disc and everything written on the sleeve was in Japanese, as was all the on-screen text in the game. I even had to rely on him to start up games because I couldn’t navigate the menus. At the time, he explained the game wasn’t available in the States, but it didn’t officially come to Dreamcast until 2001 and never in the US.

Now playing: Watch this: Our most cherished video game memories

8:00

But once he started a match, it was button-mashing heaven. I remember being blown away at the crisp 3D graphics and cool-looking fighters at that time. But the best mechanic of all, and probably the biggest reason I loved the game, was that you could kick your opponent through the wall of the arena at the end of the match.

Maybe that sounds silly, but fighting games between friends can get tense. When you can send your buddy through the wall at the end of a long fight it’s an exclamation point like no other. We’d get dramatic about it too, yelling “Boooooooom!” as we’d blast the other guy about 50 yards outside of the cage.

So, no, I didn’t own a Dreamcast, because I was a poor college student, but I still have fond memories of stomping out my good friend in Fighting Vipers 2. “You’re going through the wall!”

Jet Set Radio on the PC, running at 2,560×1,440 pixels with largely the same assets as the original, still looks great.

Screenshot by Eric Franklin/CNET

Sean Keane

The Dreamcast was the most incredible console I never owned. Games like Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Sonic Adventure and the mighty Shenmue, and features like online gaming and the VMU made me want one badly, but I just couldn’t afford it as a 12-year-old.

Code Veronica looked incredible at the time of its release — replacing static prerendered environments with fully 3D ones and bringing in some sweet sweeping shots to showcase them. The blur effect as resurrected (and newly superpowered) villain Albert Wesker darted around made my jaw drop (this was shortly after The Matrix had blown my mind at the cinema).

It got an expanded rerelease — Code Veronica X — on the PS2 in 2001, but the original version hasn’t come out on any other systems. So my Resident Evil completionist urges aren’t quite satisfied… but it’s fine. I’m fine.

Sonic Adventure seemed like an incredible expansion of Sega’s mascot into 3D, even if it’s agony to play today. That whale chase looked amazing at the time and it seemed the obvious step forward for Sonic after Mario’s glorious transition into 3D.

Shenmue was the big one though — a glorious life simulator with a rich open world that was unprecedented. Seeing Ryo Hazuki wandering around Yokosuka, Japan, as he tries to unravel the mystery of his father’s murder was fascinating, and something I only got to experience fully through the recent remaster.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Eric Franklin

I bought the original Japanese Dreamcast from NCSX back in November 1998 and got two games: Pen Pen Trilcelon and Virtua Fighter 3tb. While Pen Pen was and still is terrible, VF3 was anything but!

Why did I pay a premium to have this system imported? I was a Sega fanboy and the Dreamcast was where I could continue playing Sega games beyond the defunct Sega Saturn.

But as much as I loved playing the Dreamcast, looking back now, it’s clear to me what it really represented for me: A last chance at console success for Sega. I got a Sega Master System in 1987 and from then through the end of the Dreamcast’s life I was not only invested in playing Sega games, but also hugely invested — emotionally, to be sure — in Sega’s success as a console developer.

It’s probably strange for people to understand that, but here’s the way I saw it: The more successful Sega’s consoles were, the more great Sega games the company would make. I not only wanted to play those games, but to also have other people discover how great they were. To see in them what I saw in them: Games with great graphics and simple gameplay that belied a depth you had to uncover.

You could play Crazy Taxi like a normal person, sure. But if you didn’t use the Crazy Dash and the Crazy Stop, which allowed you to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second and instantly stop, then you weren’t playing it right.

That want and need for the Dreamcast to be successful was real. Even at the time I knew that if the Dreamcast didn’t sell a certain number of systems, Sega would likely leave the hardware business, which the company eventually did.

And the anticipation of each new big release was addicting for me. It was less about how much I would like Shenmue and more about whether it would push enough mainstream audience buttons to make people buy a Dreamcast over a PS2. It’s silly to think about now, but that was me.

I guess I just needed something to distract me from my real life at the time. For a few solid years, it was the Dreamcast.

Gifts for the gamer who has everything: Please that hard-to-shop-for PC gamer in your life.

CNET’s Holiday Gift Guide: The best tech gifts for 2018.

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lukerhill · 6 years

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How To Create A TV Gallery Wall

Some say gallery walls are trending out in favor of larger scale art. Maybe. It makes sense that gallery walls on every wall (especially the ones with a ton of tiny frames) might feel a little less “new and fresh” these days. But I’d argue that a collection of frames hung together on the wall feels pretty classic if you stop and think about it. Watch Home Alone. They totally have a gallery wall going up their formal staircase in the foyer where Kevin sleds and hurls paint cans. But one spot I love for a gallery wall these days is actually around a TV. Why? Well, that big black box isn’t exactly gorgeous.

It’s often this hulking dark thing on an otherwise bare wall, so why not break things up and add a few other rectangular things to deemphasize it. It’s not like the TV disappears when you add a gallery – but at least you have a few other (prettier) spots to rest your eyes. And you can always turn on Planet Earth, since that makes any TV look like art in a nanosecond.

We first blogged about adding a frame gallery around our living room television, oh, FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO (evidence: here – also how funny is the “What Does the Fox Say?” reference – ah, 2013). Things have evolved A LOT in that room since then (hello paint!) and the gallery got a few tweaks (some new art there, some frame switches there) but it has pretty much stood the test of time. And since I get a bunch of questions every time we show a smidge of it on social media, this post is for everyone asking about framing arrangements, what to frame, how to hang them, and where we get our art. So let’s dive in, Planet Earth Style. I’ll be the whale if you’re that big school of tiny reflective fish.

Dealing With The TV

First, if you listened to last week’s podcast you heard that we got a new TV (the old and very faithful one now lives at the beach house, reunited with our old couch and it feels so good). We also decided to mount our new TV on the wall and used one of those in-wall power cord systems to hide the wire. That whole process only takes an hour or so and is SO WORTH IT. We’ve got an entire post dedicated to creating a cord-free TV wall if you’re interested in a step-by-step tutorial on that. That post also shows you how to hide a cable box if you have one. And if you’re looking to cut the cord, here’s how we did that.

But it’s not absolutely necessary to mount your TV to create a good-looking frame gallery around it. As you can see in the old photo below, we had ours resting on the media cabinet for years. But mounting it has definitely made the room feel more spacious and less cluttered. Also, we are BIG FANS of secondhand dressers as TV cabinets – this one is from a thrift store and we have a similar one in our bonus room from Craigslist.

Getting Your Frame Arrangement Right

Ok, now onto actually hanging your frames around the TV. There are a few methods you can use…

1. The Floor Method

Grab whatever frames you have on hand and want to use (or pick up new ones that you love) and lay them out on the floor, with a gap on the floor in the shape of your TV (measure it to get the correct amount of space). Then just move them around on the floor to see what layout you like. That’s how we created this very frame wall in our original post… back when our living room was overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly brown.

2. The Paper Method

This one is really easy too, and if you are worried you won’t like things once they’re up on the wall, it’s the one to try. Because it helps you visualize things right on the wall before you actually hang the frames. How? Use newspaper, brown paper bags, or even printer paper (taped together if you need to make a larger piece of paper) and cut them to the size of each frame you want to hang. Then you just tape them up on the wall using masking or painter’s tape, and move them around until you like the arrangement and are ready to put the actual frames up in place of the paper templates. You can see that method in use here in our last house where we created a frame gallery in the hallway. Less busy paper would be easier on the ol’ eyeballs, but you get the idea.

3. The Sheet Method

This is kind of a combo move of the two above. SHAROOOKEN! You arrange your frames on the floor, but on top of a large sheet of paper (like brown craft paper, red rosin paper, or even wrapping paper if that’s all you have). Once you reach the arrangement you like, trace each frame onto the paper – even marking the spot where each one hangs on the back – creating an oversized template that you can transfer right onto your wall. It’s best on small to medium sized frame groupings (like this one we hung in our last house) because you’re somewhat limited by the size of your paper roll, but this would totally work on either side of the TV (you’d make two in that case).

4. The Figure-It-Out-As-You-Go Method

You also can be a rebel and JUST HANG STUFF ON THE WALLS! I wouldn’t recommend going totally rogue and just making holes willy-nilly (although I’ve done that and spackling takes like three minutes so it’s not the biggest deal if you end up there). But if you break things down into sections it’ll help you stay on track. For example: start by getting the centering and spacing of the frames above your TV to your liking first. Then that’ll help guide the height and spacing of the frames to the left of the TV. Once those are set, you can match them on the right side.

How To Tie Frame Groupings Together

“Should I use all the same frames?” “Is there’s some sort of formula for mixing them?” “Should all of the art be black & white or all the same type of thing (all sketches, all photos, all paintings?)” Questions like this abound. So I’ll try to explain what works for us and why we typically end up there – although this is definitely one of those “we’ve seen it done so many different ways, there are probably a million ways to skin this cat” kind of things. Personally, we started with all white frames in here, and I slowly found myself craving a little more variety, so over time if I found nice light wood frames (like the two over the TV) or some pretty thin gold ones (like the five of those you see below) I slowly brought those in to mix things up.

But despite having different frames up there, these are three factors that help tie the arrangement together:

Mats! See how most of the frames above have white mats? That ties them together and helps your eye take them all in as one big “family”

Color palette! It might not be what you notice right away, but a lot of the art has similar tones – there’s a lot of green, blue, and pink. And again lots of white in the art and the mats too. Even the objects on the wall (the antlers and the faux turtle shell) are white, so nothing is too jarring and it all looks related, yet not super cloned and repetitive.

Spacing! A lot of times this is the thing that makes a wall feel off. If the frames are hung too far apart, they read more like a smattering of islands, too far away from each other to be viewed as a grouping. The ideal spacing for me is usually 2-3″ (any closer and they can feel clumped and crowded). Also remember to treat the TV like just another frame and try to mimic the same spacing around it. This can be tricky because the TV sits off the wall a bit and that depth can change the spacing depending on your vantage point. I try to step back and view things from the couch across the room, since that’s where everyone will be viewing it most frequently.

What Should I Frame?

Since our arrangement is a mix of frame types and sizes, we wanted the items that we framed to be a bit of a mix as well. Had this been a more gridded frame gallery using identical frames – like this one we did above the couch in our last house or down our old hallway – we probably would’ve kept the art more consistent too. But to give you a sense of the random mix we’ve hung here, I added some numbers to the next two photos so you can see we have up there, where we got things, and why we love ’em.

1. Family photos (one of me with our daughter and a similar shot with our son around the same age – the mat didn’t come with that frame, it came from another frame and I switched it out)

2. White faux antlers (these were black and I painted them white years ago, but now they sell them in white all the time – here are some similar ones and this set of three is awesome too)

3. Another family photo (this is one of our favorite wedding pics because it looks like we’re standing in a bush)

4. A little algae/anemone thing I painted (this one is cut off, as is the middle one above the TV, but you can see it if you scroll up to the photo before it. I just wanted something in those colors and did it quickly to throw it up “just for now” and it has been there for years – ha!)

5. A postcard from a local art exhibit (I loved the colors and the artist, so why not frame the postcard?!)

6. Photo of a succulent (this is a photo we took while shooting our second book – love the soothing colors and all that white space – here’s a link to it in our Society6 shop)

7. Original painting (this is one of my favorite Etsy artists who sells tiny original paintings & prints and I LOVE THEM!)

8. A book page (yup, this is from one of my favorite photography books by Gray Malin, who shoots beaches from above)

9. Another succulent photo we took and got printed (here’s the link to it on our Society6 shop)

10. A faux turtle shell by Nate Berkus for Target (this was from his very first collection there, memories) – here’s something similar

11. More family photos (on this side it’s John with our daughter and our son in basically the same exact pose – I switched a mat from a different frame into this one)

12. Another original painting (from the same woman on Etsy who did the one on the other side – so in love with her stuff)

13. Map with pins where we’ve gone (got the map on eBay, took out the glass of the frame and backed it with cork so the pins would stick) – here are some similar maps

14. Another postcard (from the very same art exhibit – gives the wall balance and it’s more of those blue/pink tones that reoccur, so it ties things together)

I talked more about my process for finding frameable “art” recently on Instagram too (on one of our trips to the beach house) so check out the video below for more examples of how we fill our frames without breaking the bank:

Also! Frame PSA! The gold frames you saw in that video are my very favorite, and they don’t hail from a fancy and expensive frame store – they’re from Target! They come with the mats, are extremely pretty, and come in a bunch of sizes (I have all three of these sizes all over our house and the beach house). And the artist from Etsy that I shouted out in that last video is Emily Jeffords, who recently got picked up by Minted! Love her stuff so much.

As for how we hang them, here’s a quick video that I made for InstaStories a little while ago (sometimes videos help more than a static pic):

So there it is, a full succulent-riddled detail-riddled rundown of our TV frame wall. If you’re still feeling like you don’t know where to start or how to approach this, my loving encouragement would be: JUST START! You can see from the video above that holes in the walls behind frames don’t even get seen! So if you hang something too low and have to move it up, it IS NO BIG DEAL. Even if you have to spackle a few holes, that is as easy as spreading butter on bread, and you know you can do that. I believe in you. May your walls be happy and your holes be hidden behind frames like mine, ha!

Oh and if you have a lower TV/media cabinet situation and are left with a big bare spot on the wall above it all, here’s what we did to fill that space in our last house. So easy and so cheap! And for more framing/art ideas, we have a whole archive full of ’em, so have at it!

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lowmaticnews · 6 years