Pretty Things

What's a runner to do when she can't run? SHOP.

I know y'all are tired of hearing about my stress fracture woes, so here's a little run down (heh.) of how I've been keeping myself from going crazy since my running regimen came to a grinding halt. Retail therapy and decorating!

Instead of getting up early on Saturday morning for a long run, I started spending Saturdays with Trea pushing me around in a wheelchair at Hobby Lobby. He had so much fun! OK, maybe not, but we did find some cute stuff. I spent hours perusing Etsy looking for the perfect prints to create a gallery wall of things I love. If I have to stay inside and off my feet, I may as well have something nice to look at.

First, I redecorated my entry way. I didn't go nuts and buy new furniture or anything because simple, affordable accessories can completely change a room. I don't have a before pic, but here's the after. Including the cutest little antique fan that Trea's grandpa gave me. I love it! Almost everything else on the table was a Hobby Lobby half-off find.

Then I tackled creating a gallery wall in the office. I started with a small canvas painting of the chapel where Trea and I got married, and shopped Etsy for prints that symbolize things we love and our history together. I LOVE how it turned out.

To get everything arranged just right, I started by laying the pictures on the floor to decide how I wanted to hang them. It took a little while shuffling them all around, and I finally found the right configuration that worked for the space. Then, we hung the frames beginning with the bottom center items and worked our way up and out to make sure everything would be centered properly over the couch.

Thank goodness Mom was here to help. It took about 6 hands to figure out where things should go, and she also put most of these prints in frames for me -- her specialty!

And now for the prints we chose... Our home states. I'm from Arkansas, and Trea is from Oklahoma, so he demanded that Native America be represented. I don't love Oklahoma, but I like the song, so I dig this print.

And, of course, we had to have a chocolate lab. Bella is the baby in the family and we like her more than we like most people. The key...was on sale.

As for the rest... I walked down the aisle at our wedding to "All You Need is Love;" owls became our "thing" as a result of an inside joke that is funny to no one but us; the vertical photo is in front of the chapel where we got married -- same as the canvas; and the bottom photo was taken of us through the trees from far away right after our wedding and we didn't know the photographer was watching. It perfectly sums up how happy we were. Are. And the remaining pics are our favorites from Instagram that I ordered through the PostalPix app.

And there you have it. A gallery wall of things that make me smile.