another DIY.

i don't know about you, but i have so many pictures lying around the house just waiting to be framed. unfortunately, matting is so. freaking. expensive. so i came up with this clever idea of making your own matting, very inexpensively! 

i bought jon a couple andy warhol's from a street vender (they're so obviously original.. ;) ) and wasn't sure what to do with them. we bought this huge frame from ikea for the print i bought before we got married and hung it above our bed. i hated the way i looked, so we took it down and it was just sitting in our laundry room. i thought i could hang both prints in the huge frame for jon's downstairs bathroom. 

 i went to blick and bought a nice sheet of 20x30 poster board. they had different colors, but jon requested black. 

 the first thing i did was cut it down to fit in the frame.

 here i am, modeling how it fit the frame just marvelously. 

 then i measured where both of the prints would go. i drew a line halfway down the poster board, and halfway down both pictures. then i just decided where i wanted the bottom picture to go. when matting stuff like this, you should have more space between the bottom of the picture and bottom of the frame than the top of the top picture and top of the frame. that made it easy because i didn't need to have the exact same measurements above and below the pictures. i figured out exactly where the pictures would be, and i started to cut!

 i had to cut each line a few times to make sure it went all the way through the board, and was very careful with the corners so i wouldn't cut too far and have an exposed rip. 

 here it is! so it turned out to just be a frame for both pictures to sit behind. 

 unfortunately, one of the pictures was smaller than the other. i thought i accounted for that, but not enough. you can barely see the white edge though, so it's alright.

 i taped the pictures to the back of the poster board on all four sides, to ensure that they won't slip. 

 while i was putting the frame together-THE GLASS BROKE!!!! i was so furious. all that work, and in one of the last steps, the glass breaks. 

i hung it up anyway, and you can't even see the break in the glass! it's like an optical illusion. the frame looks really big in the bathroom, but i think the size is pretty cool. i've second guessed it, but for now it's nice. i hate everything else about the bathroom. the towel racks. why? why are there towel racks in a half bath? just put a small one near the sink, that's all you need. also, the fact that the toilet is hugging the vanity instead of being centered on that wall. the metal toothbrush and cup holder. i could go on and on. 

but, this is an improvement since we've been here for almost two years and i've just done nothing with this bathroom. now i want to find an interesting boy rug to put in here that isn't plain black and boring. i'm glad that i now know how easy it is to put matting around things you want to frame for cheap!

chalkboard.

guess what?? my sister, her husband, and her two little ones (three if you count the one swimming around in her belly!) are coming to visit me in a couple weeks! a girl in one of my classes was telling me that she has a chalkboard wall in her house, and she said that when she babysits, the kids love it! so, when the dates of my family's visit became official back in february, i knew just what to do. i want my niece and nephew to have fun here. i decided to make a chalkboard wall for the renter! we can paint our walls as long as we paint them back white when we move out, but our walls are textured, so i took the easier route. 

 jon and i measured the wall that we wanted the chalkboard on and decided on a size for the board itself. we wanted it to take up most of the wall, and still look okay and somewhat centered even though there is a weird light switch in the way. then we went to home depot and bought a $9 sheet of plywood and a $15 bucket of black chalkboard paint. the worker cut the plywood down to the size we wanted and we brought it home.

 it was so easy to paint. i just propped it up on a bucket, opened the garage and painted a coat every time i had a spare 10 minutes. i think i did about 5 coats. i wanted it to be thick because, as you can see, the plywood is very textured. it felt smooth enough at the store, but when i brought it home, i realized that it would be weird to write with chalk on it. i would recommend getting a nicer, smoother piece of wood instead of plywood. we got that because it was the cheapest!

 a few coats later, i put a piece of chalk sideways and colored the entire board, then erased it. it worked! here is my cute guy hanging it up. you can see that it isn't centered on the wall, but it still looks good. 

 i was going to frame it with molding, but i like how it looks with no border. I'm glad that i painted the edges even though i wasn't planning on having them exposed. it brings interest into our front room and gives guests a little area to doodle on. it has been fun! surprisingly enough, the grooves and imperfections in the plywood haven't proved to be a problem! it's not as smooth as a school chalkboard, but it's easy to write and draw on it.

can't wait for my favorite little kidlets to come and try it out for themselves!

check me out.

remember when i said i started working out for my new years resolution? well, 2.5 months in, it's in full swing. it was a rough start, but thats alright.

jon has started working out with me. for the past month we've been consistently going 3-4 nights a week to the gym right behind our house. (literally. it's >100 yards away from our back door.)

it's going well. i honestly wish that my body would reflect all the hard work that i've put in, but i have to keep reminding myself of this:

(stupid pinterest)

i do notice differences and feel SO much better than i did at the beginning of the year. i constantly felt like i was trying to fit into my little sisters clothes. lizzie and i are training for a 5k using this schedule. we are on week three. it's been so good for us to be doing this together, it is such a good encouragement and gives us another reason to talk to each other besides about the bachelor! ha ha.

look what jon got me! i have been wearing the worst looking running shoes for over a year, so he helped me pick out these cuties and got me nike plus! i've only used it for a few days, but i love it! technology is something else, isn't it?

hopefully putting this all out there will help me stay on top of my workout resolution. we are training for a 5k, but don't have a 5k in sight...it is mostly just a way of getting in shape. jon and i DO have tentative plans for running a half marathon in august........wish us luck!

we went camping!

and it treated us so well. 

friday afternoon, we drove out to anza borrego desert. 

we were driving through Julian, and i've never been before so we stopped to look around. 

ohhhh my goodnessss cutest little town. we went into a candy store and i bought the best gift for my nephew's 6th. in order to be able to use a debit card, we had to spend like 75 cents more, so we bought little tubes of honey. jon loves honey. 

it reminded me a lot of main street in park city, just much older and smaller. it was filled with all these cute shops right next to each other and it. was. freezing. 

(for us....it was about 50 degrees..)

we drove through and got to the event right before the sun went down. jon has been signed up for this for months. it was tierra del sol's 50th anniversary desert safari. tons of off-roading vehicles came from all over. they had fireworks, venders, and a huge raffle. it was a really big deal, apparently. and jon was in heaven. he saw that blue truck in a magazine. 

i'm not really a fan of camping. we went last year and i nearly froze to death. jon has since sold his truck (sad!!) and got a larger vehicle that we can sleep in! he also returned our nice new sleeping bags that we used last time, and got different ones that zip together:) well, it worked! i was warm and cozy all night long.  

all i care about is treats. treats and snoozinn. 

look at me. treats and snoozin. snoozin and treats, that's it.

our friends from church came with us. see them up there, teeny tiny???

we hiked out to the wind tunnels. it was really cool! i can't believe those are not manmade. i couldn't help but think about how maybe, long long ago, someone used these tunnels as homes......

here are our friends. all three of them are marines! they are a fun bunch. 

nate made us burgers and steak. it was like luxury camping.

unfortunately, on one of the 'obstacles', girlfriend got her truck stuck! she got so stressed out that she got out of the truck and ran off! it was so funny. so her husband was left to deal with getting her truck out of the jam she got it in. lucky for us, there was a group of "drunk idiots" (jon's words, not mine.) there to help pull us out. 

it was a fun day filled with lots of beautiful views. and good weather/food.

this was at the raffle. they had a drawing for our active duty military personal in attendance. there was a bagpiper there that played all the difference branches songs, and then the announcer thanked them for their service. the entire audience gave them a standing ovation. it was really touching. 

we left the desert the next morning, stopped in julian again for pictures and antique shopping. the whole weekend was so much fun. as much as i loved jon driving his truck, his new car is SO much more comfortable. i went off-roading with him twice in his truck and really didn't like it. this time, i loved it! our car was filled with yummy treats, good music and good conversation. i really like being a passenger in the car. especially with the windows rolled down. it's so peaceful. a few times when we were driving on bumpy roads, i almost passed out. it lulled me to sleep, just like it would a tiny baby. there were even a few times when i looked over to see that the same thing was happening to jon; he was asleep at the wheel! 

this was our theme song the whole weekend:

(love their entire new album (except it gets better: yuck!). i don't agree with their blasphemous phrases though. remember that.)