New wall art- pictures that tell a story

I will be the first to tell you that I am NOT a crafty person.  I do love to create things if someone else will come up with the plan of exactly how to do it and give me step my step instructions- like counted cross stitch for example.  On the flip side, I can come up with ideas of what I would love to see happen, but have absolutely no idea how to carry it out myself.

I love decorating with things that are meaningful and tell the story of who we are for the season that we are living in.  I'm sure when my kids are out of the house, i won't have their framed pictures above our kitchen table (or maybe I will...) or pictures stuck by little hands in random places all over the fridge, or (for this particular season), pumpkins and construction paper leaves stuck all over the walls as "fall decoration".  But that's who we are right now and I love it.

We've had several home decor projects going over the last several months.  Here are some of the end results and the stories behind the crafting madness.

We moved into our current apartment almost 2 years ago, and for that time, I have had a very big, very blank living room wall.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do there and since holes in walls over here is a lot more complicated than just hammering in a nail, I wanted to make good and sure it was something that I wanted to stay for a while.  One of my favorite verses for our family is Proverbs 14:26  "He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge."  I started thinking about how to make that into some sort of art piece.  I even put a plea out to the FB world to see if anyone knew of artists who might could create something out of a favorite scripture verse.  I quickly realize that anything that would be big enough to go on my big blank wall would be next to impossible to bring back from the US (where all my FB suggestions were coming from).  Then my awesomely amazing friend KJ, reminded me that she would be staying in our house a few weeks this summer, and she would be happy to create some wall art for me- I just needed to let her know what I had in mind.  SCORE!   See, KJ is all things that I am not when it comes to crafting.  My sweet Maddie used to go spend time at her home when we lived in the same city just for the purpose of crafting.  We still have a paper mache snowman that she and Maddie created out of a water bottle.

Anyway, I told her that I was envisioning 3 long panels with the verse somehow on them.  I also wanted to somehow incorporate family pictures from over the years at various places we'd visited- specifically castles or fortresses.  That's pretty much all I told her- I sent her tons of old pictures including pictures of past homes, told her where my old magazines and scrapbook paper were as we'd talked about it being some sort of decoupage thing, and told her to have at it.

Y'all.  I am beyond thrilled with the end result.  She totally knocked it out of the park and created something that I never would have even begin to come up with.  

 Didn't she do good!  She used wall paint that we had leftover, magazine pictures, scrapbook paper and best of all our old family photos.   

Here's the whole look:

Here are some close-ups:

This one has a wedding picture, pictures of the castle ruins at Byblos (one of our favorite places in Lebanon), walking along the corniche (walking by the Med) in Lebanon, a shot of Jason and I with Abbey and Maddie at the Eiffel Tower in 2003 just to name a few.

Included here is our first "fortress" in Lebanon (where we actually did huddle down in the hallway one night when H'zbollah militants took over our neighborhood), Jason and I at Petra in Jordan and a family picture in Greece last summer.

This one has our first home in Clinton, MS, my parents home in Memphis and a few other family shots.

There are many other fun memories including visits to the Cedars in Lebanon, Jason and I at a castle we visited with his parents before we were married, several of our other homes over the years and numerous family pics.  Guess you'll have to come visit if you want to see the rest!  Thank you KJ!  I am beyond thrilled- such a treasure!

Naomi and Anabelle were in need of a mirror to go above their dresser.  We recycled the bathroom mirror from our old apartment and used purple and red buttons and ribbon and turned it in to something fun to match their room.

Things like buttons and ribbons can be a wee bit challenging to find here- or at least there is not a huge selection.  I think it turned out pretty good all things considered, and Naomi was thrilled so that was what mattered!

We've also had a big blank wall above the bed in the master bedroom that I've been wanting to do something with, but not spend an arm and a leg.  Our bedroom always seems to be the last place to get decorated as it also is home to Jason's workspace and is usually my laundry center as well.  Anyway, I enlisted the help of our in-home artist (that would be Maddie).  

I bought 3 canvases with the idea of painting flowers on each to match the flowers in our bedspread.  First we drew the flowers on the canvases with pencil to make sure we got them right...  

(I say "we" because poor Maddie had me breathing over her shoulder the whole time demanding that it look a certain way...)

(she didn't seem to mind...)

(AB had to have her own paints too so she at least thought she was in on the action...)

After penciling the flowers, we outlined them in sharpie so that the lines would show through the background colors and we could trace the flowers once the background was painted.  

I tackled the job of mixing the paints to come up with the right colors.  We had some wall paint that worked for the lightish beige, but it took several false starts to get the darker mocha color and the burgundy just right.  I was super thankful that Maddie always saves glass jars- much easier to work with.  We finally got the paint colors right, and Maddie set out to paint the canvases.  I think I did the background (as part of figuring out if the colors were right) but I left the detail work to Maddie.  The sharpie outlines worked pretty well but she did have to do some freehand work.   She's looking at the bed pillow to try and match the flowers

Didn't she do a great job?  I love the end result!

Finally, these last pics aren't exactly craft projects but they are very special and tell the story of our girls.  When Abbey was a year old, we had her first year picture taken by the same photographer in Vicksburg, MS who took Jason and his siblings one year photographs.  I had it matted and framed with the verse we had chosen for her as a baby.  The timing worked out to where we were able to take both Maddie and Naomi to the same photographer.  By the time Anabelle came along, Vicksburg was not really on our radar and I'm pretty sure the guy closed up shop soon after Naomi was born- his more traditional photography business had kind of come to an end in the digital day and age.  With our 3 older girls, I had to actually wait for the proofs to be mailed to me before I could get an idea of how the pictures turned out!  

Anyway, we had a family friend take Anabelle's picture.  I showed him what the other 3 looked like and he was able to do a similar shot.  I love all of them.  Amazingly, I was able to match the matte of the four pictures despite using different shops over the years.  The frames are slightly different and the writing for the verses differs a bit but I love the end result so much.  

The verses for each girl correspond so perfectly to that season of our lives as parents and as a family.  I love to see them all together as they tell the amazing story of God's faithfulness to our family in the precious girls He has blessed us with.  Because of the size of the plaque on each frame, I just included a portion for some of them.  I highlighted what is on the frame if not the whole verse...

Abigail: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."  James 1:17 

Madelyn: "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift." 2 Corinthians 9:15

Naomi:  "I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted (my request) me what I asked of him."  1 Samuel 1:27

Anabelle:  "Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands."  Psalm 119:73

Naomi and Anabelle:

 Maddie and Abbey:

Next on our crafting "to-do" list is the little toddler table that is AB's favorite place for tea parties.  We'll see if we ever get to that!

Backyard Gardening Phase 1

If you know me, it's no secret that I love the great outdoors, and the lack of green in this part of the world has been one of my biggest adjustments.  I posted HERE several years ago about making our balconies a green haven at least as much as I could.  Don't get me wrong, this is a beautiful part of the world with it's own unique beauty (check out my post HERE about our camping trip in the desert last year), but as far as just walking out your front door and having green around you, that doesn't happen quite as much.  I am so amazingly thankful for the yard space we have in our new apartment and the opportunity it has provided to put a little green right out our front and back doors.  The space out our front door was already pretty well established so we really didn't have to do a whole lot.  When you come in our front gate, there is a little walkway down to the side with rosebushes, jasmine, fresh mint and aloe plants already well established.  Growing up, way gave my mom a new rosebush for her garden every year on Mother's Day so I got my first Mother's Day rose bush this year!

Here's the front gate (we did plant new potted flowers- lots of purple- but you really can't see them very well)

and here's the little walkway that goes down the side...

and another angle

and here's this little knobby kneed angel waiting to greet Daddy when he gets home from work...

Anyway, the backyard area was definitely the bigger challenge and has honestly taken us a good year to get started and we are still just getting going.  Gardening has been in my blood for a long time.  Here is me and my Grandaddy back in the day ready to work in his backyard garden.  Memommy even sewed him a matching orange snail onto his khaki pants to match mine (I'm sure he was thrilled!!).  I remember so vividly helping him in his backyard and the minute I smelled my tomato plants I was taken back 30 years to his garden. 

All of the girls love to be outside, but Maddie is definitely a gardener at heart too.  We're thankful that Papa and Nana (Jason's parents) now have a farm with a garden so we've been able to get our gardening fill every time we're in the states.  Maddie always wants to know if our US trips will coincide with any work to be done in the garden. 

Here are some pics of Maddie in Papa and Nana's garden...

So, our backyard presenting some unique challenges as far as gardening.  Wasn't nearly as easy as just going and picking out what we wanted to plant and going for it.  First of all, we have this lovely screened in porch.  

It really IS nice, but at the same time it is a total dust trap.  Combine the fine dust of desert living with the construction site next door and it makes it nearly impossible to keep clean, therefore it's really not a space that we use much.  AND going back and forth out into the yard area becomes a pretty messy process, especially with a toddler.  

But oh how the toddler loves to help clean!

Anyway, so first challenge is keeping the screened in porch cleaned, or even accessible- we're talking about glassing it in, but that's a project for another day.  Next challenge, is getting the yard ready for planting.  

First there was a lot of weeding to do....

We weeded last year when we first moved in when I hoped we might get around to planting last summer (we didn't).  

And then we weeded again this year...

(obviously I had lots of good help!)

Once we got all the weeds out, there was the challenge of bringing in more dirt.  Yes, we already had dirt, but it had settled a good bit and we needed to bring in more so that we could actually plant stuff. It's hard to explain, but our yard is only accessible through the guest room in the back of the house (this leads out onto the screened in porch).   Anyway, so our yard area is actually above the parking lot that is under the building.   It's completely walled in and on the other side of the wall is the drop off to the parking lot.  Like I said, hard to explain.  Anyway, we knew it would be a challenge to have dirt brought in because it obviously couldn't be hauled in through the house....

A local friend knows a guy that manages a plant nursery so he contacted him to see how we could deliver the dirt.  He came and checked things out and within an hour brought a truckload of dirt.  

He negotiated with the adjacent building because it had to be dumped in their parking lot.

From their, we negotiated to pay our building guard and the one from the adjacent building to use the ladder pictured above and haul the dirt paint can by paint can (the big ones) up and over the wall into our yard.  I took the below picture from inside the house because I wasn't sure they'd want their pictures taken...

(you can barely see him coming over the wall in the back)

This whole process took about 4-5 hours.  I delivered them 3 rounds of chai (strong tea with lots of sugar) and attempted to keep Anabelle out of the way.  Ahmed (our building guard) is one of her biggest buddies and she was extremely curious to see what he was doing!

So if you haven't been able to tell, our backyard area is essentially the large screen porch and then 3 separate areas of dirt with a marble sidewalk that goes around the porch and between the 3 areas.    The first area when you walk out the porch door, has a trellis installed and for phase 2 (or 3) of our gardening efforts, we hope to put in grapevines and maybe rose bushes to grow up and over it.

For now I just have cherry tomato plants (against the back wall) and a flowering ground cover (about mid way down on the right- this was about 6 weeks ago and it's more than doubled the area it covers but I still need to get some more of it.  Against the left wall are the zucchini seeds we planted that are beginning to sprout.   I also want to plant an olive tree in this area, more ground cover and then cover the extra dirt with pretty rocks from the Dead Sea area and make a walkway of sorts surrounded by the ground cover.  We've talked about maybe putting a bench under the trellis.  For now though, it served as our experiment area for the seeds Maddie wanted to plant!  

Moving around from this first area is a longer narrow area of dirt in the space behind the screened in porch.  This will probably be the area each year that we use for just planting fruits and veggies.  Maddie had claimed it as "hers" to experiment with and I'm fine with that.    Here you can see the cherry tomato plants along the back.  The middle row is beans and peas.  There are strawberry plants in the front and a few cucumber plants (that didn't make it).  

You walk around past this area, to the third area that is the biggest.  It already had a lemon tree right in the middle so we left that.   We planted tomato plants along the edges and flowering seeds (sunflowers and zinnias) behind the tomatoes.  We put an apricot tree in the far right corner and there are geraniums along the right side that I moved from the front when I bought new plants for that area.  

Oh and I planed more seeds around the lemon tree- chamomile and some yellow flowers that Maddie picked out.   Now, trouble is, I'm not entirely sure which things are weeds (in the middle) and which we planted on purpose.  A lot of the weeds here are still really pretty and flowering so until I determine what's what, I'll leave then for now.  

Also in this area, we're eventually going to plant another olive tree (back left corner) and another one of my favorites in this area of the world that I'm pretty sure I've identified as a Jacaranda.  They were everywhere in Lebanon and here and in the spring their purple flowers are beautiful and leave a covering of purple all over the ground.  Also in this area I'll need to plant some sort of ground cover and also get some rocks to fill in the brown spaces.  We just don't have enough water to plant and maintain grass so we need ground cover that can tolerate the dry, hot summers.  

Here is how it all was looking as of last week...

 (the peas ALL came up which I didn't expect- should I thin them out?)

Also, here, I didn't expect these all to come up..

Anyway, we're having lots of fun watching our garden grow.  Hopefully will soon post pics of phase 2 as I've put in my order with our friend for 2 olive trees, some grapevines and a few more shrubs and flowers!  

Bringing the beach to the desert

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned on this blog, oh at least once or twice, that I like to nest.  I like to be settled. I like to create a home- even if it is a temporary home for our family (which  happens more often that not!), I want it to be ours.  Comfortable, cozy, welcoming.  

I will be the first to say that I am NOT a designer.  I am sure there are all sorts of designing faux pas in the way I arrange and configure our home.  For example, I was told one time that you are never supposed to have your furniture actually sitting on the edges of the area rugs in your room.  Well.  Try fitting 6 people and all of their stuff into somewhat small Middle Eastern apartments!  Rules have to bend!  So I guess in the long room, I'm better off not knowing rules like that because I can't follow them anyway!  

In my opinion, a home should be decorated by the family, for the family.  I've never really understood the concept of having a designer come in with knick knacks that did not really initiate with the family and therefore have no meaning to the family.  I'm not criticizing those who use designers- I actually think it's a really cool concept- to be able to help people love and maximize their space.  I'm just saying, use your own things- they don't have to be fancy or expensive if they have meaning to you and your family.  

I wanted to color for our living room but I also wanted it to be neutral-ish so I ended up with kind of a bluish/greenish/grey color that accents nicely with our cream couches and brown curtains.  It works for the casual side of our living room and the more formal side because it brings out some of the colors in the persian rug we bought several years back.  

What I realized when all was said and done as far as getting the furniture in, getting the paint on the walls that I had subconsciously created sort of a beach theme.  Not outright, and maybe not even that noticeable, but when I started putting up pictures of family beach trips, I definitely noticed the sea foam greenish/grey tint to the walls (very subtle) and the sandy color of the couches and curtains.  I have inadvertently brought the beach, one of my favorite places in the whole wide world, to the desert!  (don't tell Jason though- his love for the beach is not yet as well defined as mine..  he's more a mountain kind of guy...)

Anyway, I was excited to kind of go with the beach theme in certain areas of the house.  Like I said, I had several pictures from various beach trips, as well as a few other shots thrown in there.  I liked the way these frames looked together.  My SIL, Allison,  had given me the precious framed picture of Naomi at her ballet recital (which I missed because it was 3 days after my c-section with Miss Anabelle).  So these pics are in the casual seating area of our living room...

(My mom bought the top one for me on our family beach trip last year to Gulf Shores.  It says, "Having a sister is like having a best friend you can't get rid of.  You know whatever you do, they'll still be there.")

We went as a family to Oman back in January and the girls got to go shell hunting on the beach- one of their all time favorite activities. (click here for details on that trip) A few weeks later, Maddie had all her shells spread out and we were talking about some crafty things she could do with them (keep in mind-I am not much of a contributor to these types of conversations!  i pretty much just listen to all her ideas and say 'yeah, that sounds great').  

So anyway, in keeping with our beach theme, I actually had the idea of using many of the shells in some of the tea light holders I had sitting around form Ikea.  At the time they had silver rocks in them, but I thought it would be really pretty to use the shells.  Turned out great I think and Maddie was very proud to put her shells to use.  The tea lights are in our sofa table between the casual and more formal living areas.  Also, on the table is a picture of each of the girls from our beach trip last year as well as a large shell that Maddie found in Gulf Shores.  The shells in the tea lights, though, are from our trip to Oman.

Here's a close-up...

Each individual shell is so unique and pretty- so detailed!!

Maddie also wanted to use some of the shells in her bathroom.  The girls have a combo of shells from the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for their bathroom.

We have a lot of fun family pictures on the bookshelf in the hallway just outside the girls room.  Their rooms are pink and green and I used the leftover paint from each room to paint some white frames I already had.  On top of the shelf are several large shells that we got from a friend in Oman.  Maddie wanted to display them also and I wanted to put them somewhere where little hands couldn't send them flying to the floor.  It was a little too tricky to try and hang them in our concrete walls without shattering them and this way they girls can pick them up when they want to..

Just like life at the beach, life in the desert comes with a lifetime supply of sand.  Sadly though, in the desert there's not a beach to walk on right out your front door!  There is plenty of dust to clean and floors that constantly need mopping, but at least we have the visual reminders of the kind of sand that we love all around us!