The subject of the “Leisure” post a couple of weeks ago was Flag Day (link here), where a friendly family competition resulted from my initial thought of having Taylor help me with a décor idea I had for the cabin. A few crafting evenings later (over the course of a couple of weeks when I found some hours here and there) and the project is finished. Although this DIY doesn’t exactly fall into the quick and easy category, I really love the result. Please don’t dismiss it based on the number of steps – it really doesn’t take that long and it’s worth it! Visually it’s bright and cheery and fills a large space well. Taylor loves it because he was the one to paint the flags and now they’re on display at the cabin – and not just on the refrigerator. Materials and steps are detailed below. Also, note that if you like the look but don’t have the time and happen to have the budget, there are plenty of great framed options out there for purchase, like these from Pottery Barn (link here). But at $199 a piece (so approx. $1,200 plus shipping for the complete look), going the DIY route was an easy decision for me. All in the project below cost about $150 (presuming you have some tools on hand).

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I made the mistake of telling Ella a few weeks ago that I was going to, for her big girl room, add letters to her wall just like her big bother has in his. I didn’t anticipate her being so excited about this, and she would ask, “my letters up yet?” every day when she got home from school. I had to think quickly of an idea. I love the look of the “Lake Life” letters I did for a previous project (link here) but I didn’t really want to duplicate it in her room. I also was tempted to purchase these from Anthropologie, but I wanted more color and something lighter – for ease of hanging and because I have a thing about placing heavy and/or glass things over my kids’ beds, as I’m worried they will ding around and knock something off the wall and onto their heads. If anyone is fact-checking and looks back on the post about Taylor’s room from several months ago (link here), yes, there are frames above his bed. But they are dang near bolted to the wall, and I pulled the headboard away, presuming that if they were knocked loose they will fall into the space between the wall and the bed. But I digress.  I went with a floral motif for Ella’s letters, the materials and the steps for which are included below.

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Anthropologie has the most charming dish towels – to the point that whenever I see them I think “these absolutely have no business in a kitchen that uses such towels to dry Star Wars and Hello Kitty plastic cups” – and I leave without purchasing any, wondering what else could be done with them. I’ve seen several cute blogs with posts about using the darling dishtowels to make pillow covers (for example, link here), but that would mean using a sewing machine (I may be going for some sort of record for owning a sewing machine but never taking it out of the box) and just generally taking more time than I am willing to spend on most DIY projects. I decided to frame the towel, using a large scale but inexpensive Ikea frame. The few and simple materials and steps are included below.
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