Design Wall.

The Design Wall is now up!

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I first taped the two insulation boards together. I used duct tape:

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I ironed and pressed the flannel (no photo of that). I then pinned the flannel to the insulation boards using silk pins:

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I also used duct tape to hold the corners on the back (no photo).

We — a two-person job here — installed the design board to the wall, using screws. We made sure to install the screws where the studs were located. We are not home improvement experts by any means. We had some trouble at first because the screw caught the fabric, twisting it as it went into the insulation board. We made it work in the end.

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Another shot of the finished project:

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Again, thanks to Sew Katie Did for the inspiration.

Downsizing

Downsizing — sounds easy enough. Just move to a smaller place and get rid of the stuff you don’t need or use. It ain’t easy losing weight.

We moved from a three-bedroom home to a two-bedroom apartment. We had a huge deck with multiple sets of outdoor furniture, not to mention all the items you need to mow the lawn and keep up the landscaping. Going cold turkey was not an option, so we rented a detached one-car garage at our apartment complex. There is where we put all the Christmas decorations, and there is where I went yesterday evening– to retrieve the twelve plastic containers of decorations and the Christmas tree (which we had cleverly put together to store it vertically in the garage).

Most of the boxes are full of Dickens Village pieces:

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I didn’t buy any of these pieces. They were gifts, and I loved them when I received them. Now I stare at them and wonder if I have the patience to find a place for them this Christmas. I also wonder if paying a monthly fee to store them is really downsizing. Of course I have all that outdoor furniture in the garage too.

What to do. What to do.