Framed Engagement Photos (and more)

After having a fun game night last night with Ellie & Joe and Emily & Stephen, Dan and I got home close to 1:00 AM. We are old and never stay out that late anymore, so needless to say, we woke up after 11:00 this morning. It was wonderful sleeping in like that, and I cannot wait to do it again tomorrow thanks to President's Day. Unfortunately, Dan doesn't get the day off, so I will be spending it solo. That's okay, though. Since I'm still recovering from a BAD cold after a sinus infection, I plan to be super lazy and drink lots of hot tea. :)

Today, Dan and I cooked. A lot. We spent about four hours in the kitchen after all was prepped, cooked, prepared, and cleaned up. What had us in there for so long, you ask? Well, I was running out of my individually packed lunches that save me SO much time during the work week. I noticed that I only had two left, so I made a list of ingredients that I would need, and Dan stopped to pick them up after his work out on Saturday. We made me enough lunches to last five weeks of school, or until Spring Break. Today, we made Zucchini, Eggplant, and Mushroom Lasagna, Vegetable Stir-Fry with Brown Rice, and Spicy Vegetable Tamales with Enchilada Sauce and Refried Beans. We then dished them all into single portion servings and stuck them in my deep freezer (which we found on Craigslist for $30 last summer! It is such a blessing to have). I will be posting the recipes for those things later this week.

This post is going to be about a different type of project that we decided to undertake today. As you know, we had engagement pictures taken by Hannah Hendricks over Thanksgiving Break in Missouri. We had so many beautiful photographs to choose from, and it was tough to make any decisions as to which ones to frame. Instead of picking just one or two, we wanted to be able to display all of our favorites. I found an idea on Pinterest (of course) to make a sort of organized collage, so I decided to buy the materials. I ordered 12 of our favorite photographs from our engagement session in various sizes (four 4x6 prints, six 5x7 prints, and two 8x10 prints) in black and white tones. Then, I bought black poster-board at Hobby Lobby for only 50 cents. I ordered a black frame from Wal-Mart for $8, and with a little help from Dan (who is more technical minded and could help me keep all the photos even on the poster-board), I arranged them and glued them down. Then, we put the poster-board into the frame (and cleaned all the cat hair out that had snuck in while working on the project). Dan hung it up in my living room for me, and I think it looks really nice. I took a bunch of pictures, but the lighting made it very difficult to capture how good it really looks. I will share four different pictures of the photo collage that we framed. 

We absolutely love the way the framed photographs turned out, and now I can see them each time I walk into my living room. If you have several pictures you want to frame, I highly recommend doing this. It was simple and extremely cheap. Good luck! 

Janelle