Memorandum Monday

It's kind of appropriate that my subject for this week's Memorandum Monday is actually something I learnt about from Sian's own blog.

In fact sometimes I look upon Sian as my own personal search engine - far more appropriate than Google, she shares the same interests as me and knows exactly what I might find interesting.  In fact, Google only knows what I want to find out about when I mention it, Sian predicts what I might like to have a look at before I've even realised what it is I might need to know!

This week's discovery started a few weeks ago - from a casual,

 'how long ago did we last decorate the dining room?' enquiry

 - a little devious picking at a wallpaper seam -

'it must be a while, look it's starting to peel away from the wall' {ahem}. ' It's a bit old fashioned now, wouldn't it be nice to spruce it up a bit?'  After all, there are still so many Farrow and Ball paint colours we haven't used yet. 

Fast forward a few weeks, wallpaper is stripped, new lining paper put up, paint colour chosen for the 'feature wall' (Oval Office Blue - how appropriate given that the news is all about the forthcoming US elections) and talk turns to what we will put up on the wall to complete the new look.

I had already had my eye on, and had subsequently bought, a lovely carved wood panel from Nordic House, but before you click on the link, I must warn you that you will find a lot of totally irresistible things there, and I accept no responsibility for any on line purchases you may make ...

 

This is still nothing to do with what I did for the first time this week by the way.  Just laying the foundation for the story.  Apparently, I do this a lot.  Or so the family say.  'Just get on with the story Mum' is an expression often heard.

 

So anyway, as often happens when decorating takes places in one room of the house, it has a knock on effect on other things.  Whilst contemplating what to put on the blue wall, my husband said 'it would be nice to get a collage of lots of random photos that we could put in a simple frame, something reasonably priced that we could renew every now and again.'

 

A memory stirred, a light bulb went on in my mind - I've seen a link to somewhere that prints reasonably priced posters of collages of photos ... where would it be ... what was it called ... ???

 

I headed off to check the instagram/Facebook/blog pages of my fountain of knowledge - and sure enough, found a post from Sian about an app that is easy to use, easy to upload photos from your phone, not too expensive, post and packing free, and good quality.

 

May I introduce you to Sticky9  ...

 

(It only looks an odd shape as I've just taken it out of the cardboard tubing and it's still got a bit of a curl going on but once it's in a frame it's going to look fab!)

 

I love the fact that it's full of memories and informal shots and things that make our family who we are (No prizes for guess who the mojito, the sloe gin or the Portuguese custard tart refer to)  There's memories of two engagements and a baby, holidays and a certain furry person who owns us.  I love it and can't wait to get it in a frame and up in the Oval Office Dining Room.

Many thanks to Sian for the inspiration - now what next do you have in store for me?