Apartment Upgrades

I've been so bad about posting lately! It seems like most days I'm using up all of my brain power on writing and then when I get home I just want to completely shut my mind off and watch tv or cook or really do anything that doesn't involve my laptop.

Despite my laziness, John and I took some time this weekend to put up some new pictures in our apartment. I think I vented about it back when we moved in that it's so hard to decorate because Japanese apartments don't allow you to put any holes in the walls. But we've slowly come up with a work around. Our wallpaper (that even covers the ceilings) is gently textured, and we've found that we can put very tiny pins in without making visible holes. Honestly, we bought the pins you use to display dead butterflies and other insects. So then the challenge is what can these tiny pins hold up? The answer is very light picture frames of fabric hangings.

We've found inexpensive picture frames at Bic Camera made from extremely light wood. Because they're so cheap they don't even have glass in them, just a thin sheet of plastic to protect the photo. They're basically perfect. I've also finally purchased a tenugui, a dyed fabric that can be used as a tapestry, to wrap gifts, or for a number of other purposes, and a wooden hanger to display it. It's really fun and I'm already obsessed with finding new ones to match the coming seasons.

Besides the wall hanging, John and I put up some pictures from North Carolina this weekend. We have a series of three that John took: Thomas Wolf's look homeward angel in Western NC, the lucky strike tower in Durham, and some swamp grass in Eastern NC. It makes me pretty happy to walk by them every day now.

North Carolina Love

Summer Wall Hanging

Very Tiny Nails