Pictures of Pictures

We moved into our house six months ago and are still working on hanging up our pictures. I've made it one of my goals this year to frame all of our prints and get them hung and I figured, why not start now?

I've been dreading hanging our picture collage because it's a pain finding a nice design and getting it hung up straight. I wasn't particularly happy with how M hung them in our old apartment so he passed the job off to me this year so I would have no one to blame but myself if I didn't like it! I saw an easy method for hanging pictures over at Young House Love and thought I'd give it a whirl.

 I basically traced the outline of each frame onto a blank piece of paper then made a dot where the nail should be. I taped the papers up on the wall and played around with different designs until one was found that both M and I liked. I then used the pencil markings and hammered the nails into the proper places, tore down the papers, then put the frames up in their spaces. Sounds complicated but was actually pretty simple.

I know not all of the spacings are the same, but that's what makes it imperfectly perfect. We tried to choose pictures that represented different places we have traveled to. Starting with the large frame in the top right we have Kilimanjaro. Going clockwise is San Juan, the Brooklyn Bridge, M on our Caribbean cruise, Khao Lak in Thailand, me with Wanalee, an engagement photo taken in High Park in Toronto, Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and another from sea kayaking during our Thailand honeymoon. The middle cluster of four frames were all pictures taken in the homeland, Belgium.

I'm happy with how it turned out! 

Now come, on, let's be a bit more realistic here. If I take a couple of steps back you can see what our place really looks like. Toys everywhere!

I love walking down the stairs now because there's something fun to look at and I'm reminded of some pretty crazy adventures we've been on.

Passport Artwork

I've been wanting to make a piece of artwork from old passport stamps ever since I saw Brooklyn Limestone do it here. It's actually been on my 36 in 365 list for the last two years. And I'm happy to report, I have finally gotten around to doing it! 

(click to enlarge)

The first piece on the left has stamps from Ireland, France, and USA. The middle has France, the chunnel in England, and Colombia. The piece on the right includes Japan, Portugal, and Thailand.

It was really quite simple so I shouldn't have waited so long to do it. I basically followed the instructions in the blog post that I linked to above. I bought three wooden rectangles and sawtooth picture hangers from Joann Fabrics and spray adhesive from Target. This cost me around $10 if I remember correctly, and the spray adhesive was much more expensive than anything else. M scanned our passports for me and I fiddled around with them on iPhoto to make them a proper size. I printed the pictures out on our home computer and then after realizing I didn't have a sharp enough exacto knife, just cut the proper size paper with scissors. I sprayed the adhesive onto the paper then plopped it onto the wood and voila, there you have it. The hardest part was finding a good place to hang them. I finally decided on a spot in our staircase.

I love walking down the stairs and being reminded of some of the cool places we've traveled to and the fun times we've had. For someone who is rarely crafty, I am so proud of myself, and happy to cross this off the list! 

New Zealand: Days 12-13

Carrying on in the South Island, we made an overnight pitstop in the small town of Twizel so that M could go to another Lord of the Rings tour. While he was exploring Pelennor Fields I took advantage of free wifi at the town's bakeshop and sat in the sunshine while the little one slept on my chest. Once the tour was finished we took a drive from Twizel to Te Anau, and from there onto Milford Sound. This is technically a fjord, not a sound, and one of NZ's most famous tourist destinations and also a World Heritage site.

There is only one long windy road that goes in and out of Milford Sound but it's definitely worth the trek. We took a Mitre Peak boat cruise and it's probably my favourite thing we did in all of New Zealand. So gorgeous. And now for way too many pictures:

We took an early morning cruise and it was very chilly! There's a baby in there somewhere!

Even Kymani made the trip!

After enjoying Milford Sound we took the coastal drive to Queenstown, which is sort of like the village of Whistler. I kinda loved it there.

We asked for a recommendation for lunch and were told to visit Fergburger.

ZOMG so good. We ate there twice of course.

Bear with me, I'm almost done the New Zealand recaps. Two more posts to go! Then we can move on to more Little m :)

New Zealand: Days 10-11

Time to finish my New Zealand recaps before I forget what we did!

On our tenth day we left Kaikoura, which was one of my very favourite cities. I'm not sure you could even call it a city, more like a sleepy beach town with amazing scenery. Before leaving we stopped to see another seal colony but unfortunately the tide was out and so were the seals. There wasn't much to see other than a few loners.

The gorgeous view was worth the stop though. Gosh, now that I look back on our pictures I can't believe how beautiful New Zealand is. The pictures simply don't do it justice.

From Kaikoura we continued on to Ashburton but decided to split up the long drive (with our screaming infant) with a stop at Waipara Springs Winery for lunch and a tasting. I've had a craving to guzzle down a whole bottle of wine so many times since Little m was born, but haven't had the chance. This time I was prepared and fed her before we started drinking and I also had a bottle of pumped milk to give her, so I had a grand ole time, finishing off my tastings plus M's!

We spent the evening in Ashburton and got up the next morning to drive through Mount Cook National Park. What a scenic drive! I couldn't believe the colour of the water of Lake Tekapo - a bit difficult to tell from the picture below, but the most beautiful turquoise I've ever seen. The lake is fed by glaciers and the rock dust particles mixed with sunlight create the beautiful colour.

While continuing our drive to Mount Cook we came across sheep crossing!

Tons and tons of sheep coming right for us!

We stopped for lunch in the valley of Mount Cook and this was the view from our table:

You can't get much better than that!

We also took a walk up to the terminal face of Tasman Glacier and what we thought would be a trail walk turned into a steep climb up a mountain! With a baby! Eek!

Glorious!

Stay tuned next time for Twizel.

New Zealand: Days 8-9

I really enjoyed our time spent in Wellington. It's an extremely walkable city with lovely scenery, a terrific waterfront, and tons of shops and restaurants. They say Chicago is the windy city but it has nothing on Wellington. The wind there is unbelievable. It rained a bit during our stay and we learned there’s a reason why no one in Wellington uses umbrellas – they turn inside out in seconds! The rain blows sideways. Luckily, weather moves quickly in New Zealand and the dreary morning we experienced on our ninth day turned into an afternoon filled with blue skies.

After M met up for lunch with some NZ colleagues, we took an old cable car up to the botanical gardens. The view of the city was great and we could even see the cruise ship that was in port.

After walking around the gardens and cable car museum for a while, we needed a rest. I asked M to take a picture of me in that moment because I wanted to remember it forever - sitting in the sunshine, drinking a bevvy, doing nothing! Ahhh, I miss those days!

On our tenth day of vacation we got up early to catch the Interislander ferry, which took us from the North Island to the South Island. The ride took around four hours and once we were a bit closer to the South Island and had entered the sounds, the views were incredible. I stood in awe at the back of the boat for an hour, just taking in all the scenery.

I love how the sun shone on the water, making it sparkle.

As per usual, it was a tiny bit windy.

When we got off the ferry we drove to Kaikoura, which is a popular place to go whale watching. Ever since experiencing sea sickness multiple times in Thailand, I am petrified of boating in rough waters so I knew I didn’t want to go whale watching. Instead, we decided to go swimming with seals. Unfortunately, because of the water and weather conditions plus time constraints on our end, this plan didn’t work out. We did get to see a seal colony up close when we stopped along the side of the road at Ohau Point.

The baby seals were terribly cute! We got so close to them, only to read a sign later that said stay 10 metres away! I'm pretty sure we could have outrun them if we needed to.

In this small area shown below where the waterfall is, we counted over a dozen seals frolicking in the water. Ahh, the life of a seal. They looked like they were having so much fun, swimming and flipping through the water without a care in the world!

Up next: more Kaikoura and onto Ashburton!

New Zealand: Days 6-7

On our sixth day in New Zealand we left Rotorua and began the drive to Ohakune. We took our time driving through Tongariro National Park, and after the millionth windy road, reached the ski resort at Mount Ruapehu. It was so cold up there!

For any Lord of the Rings fans out there, did you recognize this range as Mount Doom?

This was one of our longest days of driving, so we made sure to take a few pit stops along the way, including a walk to this pretty waterfall.

Here's what Little m thought about it:

Another pit stop was to see the stream pictured below which is apparently where Gollum catches a fish in one of the movies. I stayed in the car for that one, hehe.

Once in Ohakune we ate dinner at The Powder Horn Hotel, which is where the LOTR cast stayed when they were in town. See a pattern here? Someone is a bit obsessed, me thinks!

After staying overnight in a sketchy motel that smelled like green peppers, we drove to Wellington. What a nice city! The peanut and I spent the afternoon exploring the Harbourfront while M went on a LOTR tour that brought him to a bunch of filming locations. More on Wellington next time!