I shared a little tour of our living room in its current state a few months ago. Not much has changed because we're being seriously slow about what we bring in. Partially because we want to be sure we love it. But, also because buying furniture is expensive! And instead of buying something that's cheaper as a placeholder we're waiting until we're able to purchase what we really want.

But, in the mean time I thought I'd share this tutorial. I get questions all the time about these garlands that I got at Furbish Studio. I'm lucky that they're based in Raleigh so while they still had a storefront that was open all the time I could stop in on my visits home. Yay! On one of my first trips there I picked up two garlands. I had no idea what I would do with them, but thought they were really cool. After getting back to San Francisco I moved them all around our apartment for a few months (see what I mean, very slow) trying to find the perfect spot for them. Nothing I was coming up with seemed quite right. Until, one day I was thinking about how we needed something to go above the couch. Something big. And it hit me – I could hang the garlands from the wall! I tried a lot of different arrangements. Initially I thought they would look best sort of draped eclectically across the wall. But, no matter how many times I tried it I just didn't like it. And then another a-ha moment happened when I thought about hanging them vertically. As soon as I put the first two up I knew that was it. So, I ordered three more to add some weight and affect and I hung them on the wall one by one. I loved the way it looked and how much space they occupied while 1) still feeling light (it was a studio apartment after all I couldn't bring in anything too heavy) and 2) being pretty inexpensive.

The walls in our current apartment are plaster and so we've tried to be as minimal as possible with nails. This time I tied a piece of thread to each garland and hooked them on picture hangers. First, I roughly sketched out what I wanted. Then I measured how long I wanted to the string to be and where I wanted the garlands to fall. After that I measured and cut out each piece of thread, tied it and hung the garlands. The last step was measuring for spacing in between. And, voila I had a beautiful focal point for our living room!