Cute Decor Ideas - Thanks For the Ideas My Friend

While I was on my road trip with my friend, we stopped at her brothers home. His wife had recently retired from working and was working on decorating her home now that she had some spare time. 

I thought many of their ideas were cute and thought I would share them. I wish I had thought of some of them when my children were younger as I think them using their kids talents and heirlooms to decorate their home is brilliant. 

In almost every room of their home, they had some piece of art that was homemade or created by someone in the family. 

In the family room, they had portraits of each of their children that one of their daughters did in art class in middle school. They have a bit of a Picasso feel but she was a teen at the time so how fun is it that they have one of each child to frame! 

In the bathroom, which has a beach motif, they had a few beach / ocean paintings that she did. Of course they aren't masterpieces but it really doesn't matter as they are fun and artistic and hold some fun memories for the family.

It made me think that perhaps at the next family holiday, I may just pull out some oil paints and some canvas and let the girls go to town. Oils may need dry time so perhaps even acrylics could work. Wouldn't that be a fun activity? You could give them themes to choose from so they could have options but still in a theme you could use to decorate. 

Another fun thing one of their daughters made recently was this grandparents clock. She took black and white pictures of the family and cut them into circles and then painted the clock to match some of their décor and put a clear coat on it. How fun to see the family pictures while looking at the time.

I loved how she had little handprints in plaster of each of her kids hanging on the wall. Such a cute idea. I know we did that when we were little but I haven't seen anyone do that in years. Fun that she has all of them. It wouldn't work if you only had one or two of the kids prints. 

She also took out all the nick knacks that she had on the book shelves and painted the shelves and frames in the room white and then put frames and pictures all over them. She had matching bookshelves on both sides of the room and had pictures on both sides with all mismatched frames. It was fun to see her family grow through the pictures.

Her husband loved clocks so they made a clock wall which is so popular currently. It was nice that he felt he had some say in the decorating as well. 

They did the same thing to the brick fireplace painting the bricks and mantle white and putting frames there as well. I have always avoided painting over natural wood or brick but I think sometimes the colors are so ancient that they will most likely never come back into style. The harvest gold of the 1970's for example, or the lava rock of the 70's, I truly don't think those colors will ever come back into style so restaining the wood or painting over brick inside the house may be a good option. 

I still love my natural brick and have thought about updating my cabinets but there is so much I would have to shift. I don't like the layout of the kitchen but need the cabinet space so I forgo doing anything as I don't want to spend a bit of money shifting it as I would really like to update the entire kitchen. Bumping it out making a larger more functional family room / open kitchen but with no kids home, I can't see it being worth the cost as I don't know how much longer I will be in the home if all my kids end up elsewhere. 

The last thing I thought was fun that they did was to print all the places their kids served as Missionaries in fun multi color prints and then a map in the center showing where they were serving and times they moved within the areas. I think I would probably put a smaller map within the same matted frame with the dates of moves or dots on the multicolored map with the dots representing dates of moves and towns within the same frames as to avoid just having a map on the wall so that when the kids take the framed "art" with them, they have the dates and cities on the framed art rather than one map for all the kids. Just one idea that could work! 

It was fun to visit and see the fun ideas people come up with and getting ideas for things I may want to do bouncing off of what they have done. I appreciate them allowing me to take pictures and share them with you! 

Have a Blessed Day!