Turning our house into a home

Josh and I bought and moved into our first house in July. Buying a house is WAY fun. No, I take that back, buying a house is not fun at all. In fact, it is stressful and tiring. But, having a house that is your very own, that is fun! I am sure just about anyone who has bought a house (except for maybe those lucky rich people out there) can tell you that it takes a while to make your house a home... because you spent so much money on the house, that you kinda need to take your time spending money on the stuff you put inside of it... or you will have no money left :) I know this, but it still drives me crazy! I want our house to be cute and beautiful. I want our house to look like a home. Still, I know this will not happen over night, and Josh and I are trying to be smart and just do a little bit at a time.

So, about a week ago we bought our first piece of art to hang in our house. This was a big step for us... we were going to put something on a wall! We have always wanted a big photograph of a tree to hang over our bed. Josh and I are both from states where trees grow big, tall, and green. We also lived in pretty small towns, so there were lots of forests and other wooded areas. Any of you who are native to Arizona may not understand this concept... Think of lots and lots of those things that you see in people's houses at Christmas time being outside all year round... This is something that both of us miss, and having a tree over our bed seems like it would make living in the desert just a little bit easier. So, we got a large photo of a tree and were all set to hang it. We got those 3M photo hanger things because we did not want to worry about making holes in the wall. I mean this is our very own home, we don't want to fill it with holes (*Notice... I said that we got the 3M things because we wanted to be nice to the walls... it obviously has nothing to do with us being lazy at all). We put the picture up and it looked great! We were super excited. Until about two hours later when we were seconds away from sleep and heard a huge CRASH right next to our heads. So no, in case you were wondering, that is not a fun thing to wake up to.

By the way, those 3M photo hangers do not work. It is a good thing the picture fell behind our bed and not on top of us, because we would have been smooshed and cut to pieces. Once we realized what happened, we turned on the light, moved our bed, and saw that the whole thing had fallen behind our bed, the wooden frame broke, all of the glass in the frame shattered into a million little pieces, the matte for the photo was ruined, and the actual photo that was in the frame was scratched from the broken glass... so there was pretty much nothing to be salvaged.

It took about half an hour to clean up this mess... during one point Josh moved one of the large pieces of glass off to the side while he was picking up the little pieces, only to later turn that large piece of glass into more small pieces when he didn't see it (cause, you know, glass is clear) and stepped right onto it with his bare feet... We also went through about three trash bags while picking up the glass, because glass just slices right through those suckers.

Surprisingly, and thankfully, we went to bed that night with no cuts or any other injuries (except for our wounded souls... those dumb 3M things... We put our faith in them and they let us down hardcore!).

So, now it is time for round two. Josh and I bought some new photos to hang over our bed (still trees of course). This time we also bought screws :) Tonight it is time for round two. We are going to try to hang them the old fashion way and see how well they hold. Pictures will follow later... that is if they stay on the wall. Fingers crossed!

-Kelley