Yesteryear photos as momentos

I was bored at work the other day and started googling ou street name. I found some awesome old, old photos which I thought would be great to keep so downloaded them to my hard drive.

Check these out.

I think I would like to have these printed out and displayed in frames some where in our house. That first one actually blows up really big and clear so I think I could actually do it pretty large. You can't quite see our house in the second photo but you can still see lots of interesting stuff.

Let there be light

Not sure if I have mentioned it but the vacant block on the left of our house is finally getting a house. The owners are about 5 years younger than us and have no kids. They are building a 2 storey house. Phew! It all sounds great. They showed us their plans and they have a copy of ours.

One issue we are dealing with at the moment is their garage. They would like it to be next to our house and less than the required 1 meter from our habitable (lounge/kitchen) window. In order for this to be ok, we have signed off on the deal. However because we will be losing a fair bit of light they have agreed to pay us $1000 to install a skylight. I am sure it will cost a lot more than that to get one I'd like but hey, we don't want to start off on the wrong foot with our nice new neighbours.

So we have been googling ideas. I'd love electric opening ones but they are super expensive.
I'd love more than one. I'd love three, but again money is an issue. Here are some that I think could look good with our flat ceiling.






I really like the centered ones over the island bench with lights hanging off them. I wonder if we could do that. Also I would put some moudling around it to make it more of a feature instead of just a hole in the ceiling. I haven't forgotten about the window splashback either. That will give some more nautral light over the sink.

That pesky space above our TV

So I was doing my daily read of one of my favourite my favourite blog Young House Love and they had just completed a project that I have been struggling over since we got our flat screen TV last year. What to do with the wall surrounding it??

Here is it currently:

It has an Ikea TV bench under it which had glass in it but I put some paper in there to hide the mess. Not happy with it but it will do until I try that cool frosting idea.

So do I do a shelf or shelves? Some prints? Artwork?  What do you think everyone?

Edited to add:
Sherry from YHL blog just suggested a photo collage around it and I just found these great examples on Pinterest.


I really like the second one beause it is not centered and out TV can't be centered above the cabinet because of the chair next to it.

This is me playing around in Paint.

Brown shelves look better I think.

I think it is too busy.