As a part of the Apartment Therapy January Cure, one of the last assignments is for participants to frame some artwork and get it hung up. Although, I’m well out of my own personal January Challenge, this assignment was important to me, so I say better than never on this one. Here’s how it all turned out.

Now, let me go back and explain how it could possibly take me forever and a day to hang up a couple frames. I had purchased two white frames and black matting, with the intention of hanging up some photos of the hubby and I, in our master bedroom. I printed off a photo and placed it in the frame with the matting, and I hated it. My friend suggested painting them, and I decided that sounded way more fun than exchanging them. I didn’t get to this project until last weekend just because life has been hectic –and one has to be in the mood to be crafty. I am happy to report that once I started working on this project, I enjoyed painting so much that I decided to create some art for the other frame.

I knew I didn’t just want to paint them, and the idea of texture was on the brain, so I found some mesh in my fabric drawer and placed it over the matting. I just taped it in place on a piece of foam core board. Then I began painting, just using some basic white acrylic paint. After maybe ten minutes, I peeled the mesh off, and this is the outcome.

Once I saw how the white turned out, I knew that a little touch of gold on the matting border would be nice. I love that the matting has dimension, and I really like its imperfections and variation.

For the second craft, I pulled out my letter stamps for a little touch of personal art.

I did not have a black ink pad, so I used black acrylic paint and this required a lot of testing. Also, I just liked this photo.

I chose two lines from our wedding vows for this piece. The top one is from my vows, and the bottom one is from his vows. Now, this little reminder lives over our bed, so we can see it every morning and every night.

I am really pleased with the outcome, and I love that with each day our home becomes more complete and more us.

xo

As the big finale to the Apartment Therapy January Cure (I dubbed it January Challenge), we threw our friends a cocktail party. For the first time ever, we did not ask our friends to bring drinks or an appetizer, so I really went for it, providing a good variety of appetizers, a signature cocktail and the basics for the bar. Side note, of course, they all brought a bottle of wine, or a fun treat regardless. Anyway, this was a big undertaking for me, as I always have timing issues when preparing big meals, but it went off without a hitch (with the help of a couple friends in the final hour, how fitting, right?). Truly, I am shocked at the success of the food and drinks, and am so pleased that everyone had a good time. We kept the party fairly small with around 20 people, I put together a little candy bar for favors, complete with mini waters for the road, and we had a photo booth because they are always so much fun. We saw friends, both old and new, and it was a fantastic night. It felt wonderful to host our friends in our home that has come such a long way. Here are some snapshots from the evening.

I used a paper table cloth and a gold pen to show what was being served.
A little close up of that green chile and artichoke bread — get the recipe here. Oh and next to the bread, bacon covered pineapple. All of my carnivore friends loved it. Just wrap pineapple chunks in bacon and sprinkle a little brown sugar on top, bake at 375 for about 25 minutes. There are recipes all over Pinterest.

Since you cannot see the crab puffs in the photo at all, here’s a little pre-bake shot I took. These were delicious, get the recipe here.

Oh and these caprese skewers were so light, tasty and easy to make. I drizzled a little balsamic glaze over them right before serving.

So, clearly, everyone hated the food…kidding. Please excuse the crumbs and such, but this is real life, it happens.
 
My lovely friend, Angie, pictured in the back there, brought these adorable heart shaped sugar cookies, and they were delicious. Here is a not so great photo of the candy bar favors. Those strawberry Pocky are so, so, so good.
I couldn’t talk about the photo booth and not share a photo. They are so fun and so easy to put together. We used my iPad and found a free app called PhotoBooth. We were able to prop up my iPad, using my painting easel, and then you just had to hit the button to take 4 photos in a row. You got a little countdown, and then if the pics were good, you click on Share and then Save. If the photos weren’t keepers, just move on to the next. We put a little sign on the top of the easel with those easy instructions, and it worked really well. For the backdrop, I just hung a black sheet and then a large white sheet in front of it, and I bought some polka dot balloons.  I strongly urge you to have props on hand as well because well, this happens.

SO.MUCH.FUN.

Have a great day!

xo