Hello, how are you?! I didn’t mean to have such an absence on my blog for the past month but January has been tough. It never is an easy month for me: taking down decorations, going back to regular non-Christmas music, trees on the side walk – it’s usually just too sad. On top of all of that you add this polar vortex thing, two cabin fever crazed dogs that have short hair and can’t stand the cold and a bad and persistent case of strep throat to the mix and you get one grumpy sad month. I’m not super psyched for February either but I am done with this winter rut.

I decided to focus on the things that make me happy so this past weekend I went on a DIY frenzy. There is nothing that makes me feel more accomplished than finishing a project that has been on stand-by for a long time – for us, it was our wall art collage. I had already done months of extensive research, scouted out fantastic pieces and purchased the frames- they all were just waiting silently by the wall for me to take action. This past Saturday I enlisted the best handyman I know and we got to work (to be fully honest Mike did all the hard work).

{When I was younger I was obsessed with making collages – on binders, notebooks, furniture- you name it. I loved looking at the different photos and finding what fit well together. It goes without say that the first step for our wall art collage was, by far, my favourite. We brought in all of the different photographs and random works of art that we have collected over the last few years and played around with the arrangements. It’s the best way to decide what should go on the wall and to see what you are missing.}

{Once we decided on the layout, we took numerous photos of it and transferred the pieces so that they sat right in front of the wall where the collage was going. Mike measured it all and we made last minute changes to make sure that it would look perfect and not too crowded}

                 {This meticulous handyman is the sole reason why the project turned out the way it did! The key- according to Mike- is measuring}

{While Mike was doing all the hard work I sat mesmerized by the beautiful afternoon lighting that was enveloping our apartment…can you blame me?}             

 {The final product!}

In case you are wondering some of the pieces on our wall are family heirlooms that have been passed down, others were great finds at thrift stores, one of them is a handkerchief that has a pattern that we fell in love with (can you tell which one it is?) and the rest are illustrations I collected from old calendars.  

Do you suffer of winter ruts too? If so, what do you do to get out of them?