Decorating with the Thomberg's

What do the Thomberg's do on Saturday nights after we put the children we love to bed???

We watch HGTV, drink wine, and decorate!

Mark and I feel our home is our sanctuary and our oasis, the center for our family. We want to make it comfortable, and truly and distinctly our own (on a budget of about nothing...)

So, after two trips to IKEA (because I changed my mind about the shelf size and location), we were ready to take the boring wall between our dining and living area from bla to brilliant. (Obviously I forgot to take a BEFORE picture & had to stage the props.)

The clock sculpture thingy above was taken down. The shorter IKEA shelves on the floor will be returned. I wasn't sure if we wanted two shelves, three shelves, or a combination.

Because Mark wanted to hit the studs, he also needed to drill new holes in the shelves to center them on the wall between our windows. After we were done, we couldn't find enough of the little white sticker hole covers, because now we had more holes(even though I had those ones that needed returning), and OF COURSE none of our projects turn out perfect (but remember... we're OKAY with that). I'll deal with the little sticker/cover issue later.

Whalla - We love our stud finder! We decided on two shelves of the same length (at a cost of $14.99 each).

Next we sat on the floor, stared at the empty shelves, and drank more wine for a while. We ran around upstairs and downstairs grabbing things from cupboards and boxes trying to find the right display combination. Wild, crazy Saturday night action!

The shelves turned out to be the PERFECT place to display two platters we love. There were from our Crate and Barrel wedding gift registry. As we approach our 7th anniversary, they have now found their perfect resting place (outside of the bubble wrap they were most intimate with for too many years).

This vase is from Tiffany's. It is a VERY, VERY special gift from my dearest friend Cindy. She gave it to me in it's beautiful robin egg blue box as a pre-wedding shower gift one day when we met for lunch at the Country Kitchen in Hutch. The egg was an Easter gift one year from Chris. Mark prefers to stick it in front of the unsightly screw with no sticker cover!

The shelf the following morning.

See the empty photo frames? The whole point of the shelves was originally to display photos & add "depth" to our decorating. Well...we hadn't yet printed any of our most recent family photographs taken last November!!

The finished project!

This is after a trip to the Costco photo counter the following Saturday to print family photos for less then $5 & a stop at JoAnne for the .99 fake flower.

I will admit it is not BRILLANT, but really, what were you expecting! We like it (mostly...)

**So here's the deal fine readers! We are very happy with our shelves, but it is a work in progress. The truth is, we will probably change out the family photos with something else!!!**

**Also, I haven't found just the right fake flower for the Tiffany vase.**

**And, we have also toyed with the idea of painting the space behind the shelves a different color. We have no idea what color that might be.

Decorating is very personal to both Mark and I. It takes us time to find that just right fit. We also love finding ways to decorate with and display things that are important to us - OR WE MIGHT JUST BE CRAZY!