as soon as i painted the guest room a dark blue, i knew i wanted to hang up a line of photos in white frames to help break up the dark color. the room gets so much natural light that the dark color really isn't a problem during the day, but at night it does start to look a little cave like. i have been planning on buying the frames from ikea and even had them in my cart during our last trip. since i wanted at least 5 of them, the price was quickly adding up (as it often does at ikea) and i couldn't justify the extra $$ at the time. so i never got them.

while at homegoods last friday we spotted a few of these in the sale area:


they had 3 of one style, and 2 of another, but they were approx. the same size and looked very similar. the black frames were really scratched and had paint chipping off of them, but that didn't really matter to me. a couple were $5, and a few were $7. in total they were less than $30 for all 5. once we purchased them we realized that the mattes were actually ivory, not white. we looked at hobby lobby to try to find pre-cut white mattes but they were out. so instead we bought a 79 cent bottle of white acrylic paint and just painted the mattes white - problem solved. for the actual frames, we gave them all a light sanding to remove the chipped paint and smooth a few scratches. but after we primed them and then painted with a high gloss white spray paint, you really do not notice any of the imperfections.



now you can see the pictures from the hallway and i think that it makes the room seem that much more inviting.



we decided to fill the frames with some of our favorite travel photos.



i love what they do for the room, and i love how the white frames and mattes look against the dark walls.



we also have a few other changes that we're making to this room, so stay tuned. the guest room has always been one of my favorite rooms in our house, and these changes are just making me like it even more. maybe we should just use it as our room instead...