Scripture around the house

I love the idea of using my/our favorite scriptures in decorating our home.  I am NOT a designer and I definitely don't have the budget (or the know-how) for lots of fanciness, but I love using things that we have and coming up with creative ways to decorate our home.  One of my desires for our new home was to use scripture in fun and creative ways and in ways that the girls could also help with and appreciate.  As always, it's a work in progress, but here are some things we've done so far.

Our kitchen was our cozy room this winter.  (which means it was one of the only parts of the house we could keep warm...).  Anyway the big wall behind our kitchen table was one of my biggest challenges...

(this is a picture from soon after we moved in, before we had our island). 

 I knew I wanted to do something above the kitchen table with the girls artwork.  I also wanted colorful frames.  Problem- it's really hard to find picture frames here for a reasonable price and that aren't' really ornate and crazy looking.  Jason looked while traveling at Ikea but the size was off.  I had about decided that I would have to wait until we got to the states this summer and hit Target UNTIL... I happened across a frame shop.  Although he didn't speak any English, he had frames in every color in the exact size I wanted AND for only 5 JD (about $7)-SCORE!!   Here is the finished result.  3 of the pictures, the girls had drawn at various times over the last year and I had already picked out to use....

The 4th is the handprint picture.  I'm kind of proud of it... It's not often that I have an original idea but this was totally mine (please don't burst my bubble and tell me if you've seen it somewhere before...).  I wanted to do something with all 4 girls prints and I love Psalm 90:17...

So Maddie and I came up with this (I can't take all the credit- Maddie gets at least half of it!)

It was Maddie's idea to write the Psalm like stems coming down from the handprints..

Fun, right?  And let me tell you, getting a 10 month olds handprint was NOT easy!!

Oh, and here's a bigger shot of how the kitchen looks now

and with the table pulled out..

So.. on to the next project.  I went with bright colors in the kitchen.  I brought back red, yellow and green fiesta dishes and I love the way they look with our framed picture from Lebanon.  Also, I painted my bookshelf red to go with the kitchen.  The yellow frame was an old white one I had  and I painted it and wrote Proverbs 14:26 on it which is one of my favorites...

the top of the red shelf with the Lebanon picture..

I wanted the girls to participate in our scripture around the house efforts.  I had these red and pink frames from Ikea that I bought because I knew they would at least match the red and pink in Maddie and Naomi's room.  We ended up using them in the bathroom (also very red and pink!). The girls wrote out scriptures on card stock and decorated them and we can switch them around for different seasons of life.  Anyway, this is what we came up with and I think they're pretty cute!

I have a lot of pretty crosses but we don't display them too much because they can be offensive in this part of the world.  My bathroom is brown and turquoise and I was given this really pretty turquoise cross.  I framed Galatians 2:20 to go along with it..

Abbey and Anabelle's room is a work in progress for sure.  I used more of the pink picture frames for above Anabelle's bed.  Psalm 119:73 is very special to me for her.  It says, "Your hands made me and formed me.  Give me understanding to learn your commands".  I did another handprint for her on the middle frame with pictures with Jason and me on either side.  

We had Abbey's bed made and she loves it!  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  AND, I LOVE how this picture that she painted last year at Christ Methodist matches the colors that she picked out for her room.  We're working on a framed scripture to go above her bed...

Here's another shot of her bed...

I'll do some more pictures soon with the rest of the house (mainly for family who have been asking to see..) but for now I wanted to focus on our scripture projects.