State Love

by Ang

So, I have been reading this blog for at least 4 years:

www.younghouselove.com

I don’t even know what led me to it to begin with, but it is a great decorating/organizing/lifestyle/misc. blog. The couple, John and Sherry, started off by blogging all about their first house ‘redo’. They blogged about the good, the bad, and the ugly and the ups and downs of DIY projects. But they also shared organizing tips, traveling tips, cleaning tips, and more.

Anyways, they soon outgrew their first house (they had a baby), so they sold it and bought another one.  And blogged about it.  And then wrote a book!!

So of course, I had to pre-order it, because I feel like I know these people personally.  They are just so down to earth and real.  I emailed them once about something and Sherry (herself!) got back to me right away and she was so sweet.  I just really like them and I LOVE their blog.  My book arrived on Monday, and I was NOT disappointed.  I haven't read it completely yet, although I've flipped through every page.  It ranges from super simple projects, to whole weekend (or longer) projects.  They have step by step instructions and let you know how much work, time, and money is involved with each one.  It's great!

I immediately flagged a few I wanted to try.  The first one I did was state art.
I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while now. It’s just so simple!

I started by printing 3 maps.  I used maps from nationalatlas.com, because they were the right size.  I then picked 3 different patterns of scrapbook paper from my stash that complemented each other, but were not matchy-matchy (they are all from the same Basic Grey paper line).

Using my cut-out states as templates, I traced one state onto each piece of paper and then cut it out. It was arts and crafts time at our house last night.

And then I popped them into a frame.  I had previously used this frame to hold my black and white postcards I got from Paris. 

Although I liked it, I am just not a huge fan of black and white...I like color!

So I took the postcards out and put them in my Paris book, and then popped the states in.

Voila!  A cute piece of art that is a little sentimental.  Nebraska:  where I'm from.  Illinois:  where my husband is from.  New Mexico:  where we live now.  I added a little heart to Albuquerque.  Awwwww.

The whole project took maybe 30 minutes. The cost was: zero. Nada. Zilch. I used everything from my own stash.

I was going to hang it next to our U.S. map, but I didn’t want that wall to get too ‘mappy’, so I hung it in our hallway instead.

I hope to do more projects from this book.  I'll blog about them if I do!