Postcard Art

Bit by bit we've been adding art to our home, mostly based on places with special significance to us, like San Francisco, Eastern Market and DC.  We realized, strangely enough, that we didn't have one piece of Old Town Alexandria art, even though it's one of our most favorite and frequented places.  We have picked up most of our art at the Eastern Market, but even though Old Town is so close by, none of the artists ever feature Old Town.

We found ourselves back in Old Town last weekend while John's mom, Beth, and her friend Gail were in town for a visit.  While doing some shopping, we visited The Christmas Attic, a great little boutique shop one block from the Potomac River and located in what used to be a tobacco warehouse back in the 18th century.  As I'm sure you can surmise, they have a ton of Christmas ornaments and decor, but also sell a variety of other knick-knacks, including Old Town and DC themed items.  I found these cute postcards made by Found Images featuring old images of different Old Town landmarks.  At only $2 a pop, I thought it would be a great, inexpensive way to finally honor Old Town in our home.

The first photo on the top says "King Street Looking West" and has an image of the main street running through Old Town that today is home to tons of boutique shops and restaurants and always seems to be packed with tourists and locals alike.  Moving clockwise, the next card is an image of the George Washington Masonic Memorial.  The memorial was built in the 1920s by Freemasons to honor George Washington and today offers tours throughout the building.  John and I went once and the tour itself is pretty cheesy (including a glimpse at a reproduction of the Arc of the Covenant...), but the views from the very top can't be beat.  The next two cards feature images of two churches built back in the late 1700s and still stand today as landmarks in Old Town.

So yesterday John and I went to Michael's to pick up frames for the cards.  Oddly enough, we had a really hard time finding frames for 4x6 photos with a mat.  We finally found mats sold individually at 8x10 with a 4x6 opening, so we picked up four of those and four 8x10 frames (with a 5x7 opening).  At least the frames were 40% off to make up for the frustration.

After a quick switcheroo and popping in the cards, John helped me hang them all in a grid in our dining room and we had a brand new addition to our decor.

To make room for our new art, we had to move our Union Station piece (shown in this post), but we had a perfectly empty spot for him right on the other side of the wall, so he didn't have to go far and now our office/reading room is filled up.

That's pretty much all we accomplished this weekend.  I guess we were feeling pretty lazy.  I did get a gnarly paper cut from one of the mats, so, you know, I think I needed to take it easy and heal.  :)