Be My Guest | Hollie @ Fancykins

Since I probably have a drink in my hand and my toes in the sand. (Yes, even if it's before noon--because it's vacation!) A few friends are taking over LJBaH this week! Today I'd like to introduce you to my dear friend Hollie who is not new to blogging, but she does have a brand new blog!

Hey, everybody! I’m Hollie, and right now I’m probably (hopefully?) sitting on a beach with our friend Trina, maybe (definitely) drinking some sort of fruity, beachy drink.

When Trina asked me to write a guest post for LJBaH, I was more excited than I probably should have been considering I was at work and swamped with a billion other projects that should have taken precedence. You see, I’ve been friends with Trina for 11 years and her house is one of my favorite places to spend a weekend - I’ve moonwalked along her catwalk and claimed a guest bedroom as my own - and I love to gab about house and blog stuff with her.

Trina and me, the year we were roommates in college, in what remains one of the greatest nights of my life.

So here’s my contribution to LJBaH, which details a night I ate pizza and used a hammer. Small beans for some, a giant leap in small-space living for people like me. Follow my blog, Fancykins (which I rarely update but have big aspirations to do that someday) find me on Instagram @holliecats and on Twitter @holliewrites for more trials and tribulations of lazy decorating and hanging things.

How to hang pictures without having a mental breakdown in 12 easy steps

Step 1: Have two or more pictures that you want to hang evenly, in a row on a wall. Decide you have time to binge on one or two episodes of Bridezillas before you have to get down to the dirty work.

Step 2: Snap out of your reality TV blackout when you realize your apartment is superdark. Notice your Netflix sesh was five hours long, decide to hang pictures anyway.

Step 3: Order pizza from Papa John’s, despite the fact that you live seconds away from a billion other pizza places that are probably way better. Go downstairs and pick up Papa John’s 30 minutes later, cursing the fact that you live so close and that’s why it’s so hard to stick to a diet.

Step 4: Get back up to apartment, super winded because you live on the top floor of a walk-up, decide to eat pizza while hanging pictures to save time. Great plan until you spill that garlic dipping sauce on the rug and the cat licks it up and wants more.

Step 5: Realize there isn’t one single hook on the back of the frame; instead, there are two on either side. No worries, you’ll just use some of that wire you think you got in a photo-hanging kit a few years ago.

Step 6: Can’t find that photo-hanging kit, resort to purple vintage ribbon you randomly find in a kitchen drawer.

Step 7: Vintage ribbon stretches, which means pictures are so uneven it looks someone hung them up after taking a billion shots of Fireball. Eat more pizza, call for backup.

Step 8: Backup arrives, also eats pizza. Together, you decide to hang two nails on either side of the frame where the two hooks are. High-five each other and get to work.

Step 9: “Maybe we should see if there are tips online?” the backup asks after three failed attempts. Realize the iPad is all the way in the other room, suggest trying again after you eat more pizza and add a few songs to your “Housework Jamz” playlist on Spotify.

Step 10: After 1,000 extra holes are hammered into the walls and the pizza is gone, the pictures appear to be somewhat even. Use your Handy Level app and get confirmation that they are indeed as level as you’re ever going to get them.

Step 11: Step back and survey your handiwork, gasp in horror when photos look super freaking uneven. Realize your vintage apartment has crooked ceilings and floors, which make everything look wonky and all of your stress was for nothing.

Step 12: Make personal pacts to hang only gallery walls from now on, fix these pictures another day, start diet tomorrow. Pin yourself to sleep and dream of future projects.

Step 13: Never fix the pictures, eat pizza again two days later. Realize you’re not the only one who eyeballs this stuff. Feel OK about your apartment, your pictures, your life.

And that’s it. Easy-peasy, huh?

Any LJBaH readers have simple picture-hanging tips and tricks you’d like to share, or are you giving it all up to hang haphazard-yet-cohesive gallery walls? Do you even have to measure those things?

Hollie

Well, I didn't realize she was going to share a college days, drinking-in-a-bar, kissy face photo of me, but there are worse ones she could have included....Thank god there were no Iphones when we were in college!


P.S. Only a few days left to enter the giveaway for this beauty. Enter Here.