DIY Display Shelves

The Mister built these display shelves to house DVDs at our last house.  After we moved our organization system changed (downsized!) for all of our CDs and DVDs and these three shelves were left without a home.

I don't have pictures of the building process but we basically used three 10' poplar boards that are about 6" wide.  The Mister routered the other edge to round it over and sanded all surfaces to get rid of any rough spots,  and we attached black brackets.  Super easy and fairly inexpensive.  When we were storing DVDs we had the shelves basically upside down so the brackets doubled as ends to keep everything from falling off.

Enter the new house and a large expanse of wall with no real purpose.  After the shelves rattled around in the office for six months, we finally got them up during the holidays and displayed our collection of nutcrackers.  It was perfect!  Once all of the Christmas stuff was packed up I was left with twenty feet of empty decorating glory!  I gathered some things from around the house and purchased a few new things.

 

I was going for more winter but it mostly became a mishmash of things we love.  Please excuse the black cord, we're still working on our projector set-up.  I just changed it all up for valentine's day (didn't buy anything this time!) so I'll share that soon.

I LOVE this map!  Fount it at W*Mart

Black frame from W*Mart with Family Subway art from here, shadow puppet hands in thrift store frame from here

 These movie reels came from JoAnn Crafts several years ago.  The little black owl peeking into the picture came from W*Mart's clearance aisle.  It had a gold votive holder in it that The Mister pried out for me.  I was thinking about painting it white, but haven't decided yet.

I scavanged the wood box from my dad's shop stuff, the candle holder came from a thrift store, it was previously gold but a couple coats of metallic spray paint and a little epsom salt made it feel like winter.

 I scored two of the window frames at a garage sale ages ago for about a buck each. Black spray paint, easy peasy. The twine wrapped bottles were a project from a couple of years ago and have been used in a variety of ways.  I found the lantern and small mirror, along with the two red stars at a local gift shop.

The two other pieces of artwork, which I apparently didn't get pictures of, came from here and here.

 

Daily Six

I remember coming across the idea of a "daily six" some time ago while reading a book, and recently I came across this blog post from Forever Organised.  I loved the idea to help me focus and not get overwhelmed with a crazily long to-do list.  It's also really helped me do things that might normally get pushed aside, like a craft project, or that science experiment J has been begging me to do.  Basically if I get done with my daily chores, and what's on my daily six list, I feel pretty dang accomplished for the day.  Sometimes my daily six includes a chore (put away massively huge pile of clean laundry!) and frequently it contains a reminder to make school time a priority.  I've been using one for about two weeks now and love it!

Since I'm also obsessed with tinkering in iPiccy, I put together some cute lists to print and use.  I just load them into my photo program one at a time and print a sheet of 4 (3.5 x 5), they come out in a nice size. 

Right click and save image as to get yours!

I pre-printed a bunch, cut them out, and store them in this cute straw holder that didn't have another job yet.  These are right next to my desk so they are easy to grab, I fill one out each night for the next day and leave it on my desk right next to the computer. I am in and out of the office/schoolroom a hundred times a day so leaving it by the computer means I'll see it and have a reminder through out the day.