Frames and Ribba Shelves

I am now at work, my storm playtime at home is officially over. I spent the morning organizing the house, had lunch with Mango, took a nap, and then spent the afternoon at IKEA! Originally, I wasn't going to leave the house, driving in the rain down here in Florida is not exactly the safest thing to do, however the rain subsided and the sun started to come out, so I decided to drive down the street and do a little shopping. My mom and my sister joined me and like the fantastic shopping army that we are, we divided and conquered. I had two specific departments that I wanted to visit, lighting and wall decor.

First off, I stopped in lighting. I love lamps, chandeliers, pendants, you name it. I guess it's because my mom while I was growing up hardly ever had the overhead lights on, instead she always preferred the soft lighting of lamps around the house. I was looking specifically for a lamp for our home office. Right now, I have this cute black, shiny base lamp with a funky floral print shade that I got at Target. However, Mango says it's too girly for the office and has always wanted one of those utility task lamps. While I was searching for a lamp that was both stylish and manly, I came across their task lighting section and fell in love with the black Forsa work lamp, I think it will be the perfect compromise:

Next up, was the wall decor section. As I've said before, the walls in our home are seriously bare. I got two of these Ribba frames in Ivory for our bedroom, I think the color will look nice against the dark taupe on the walls, as for the picture inside of it, my lovely sister has volunteered to work on those for me.Tucked away in a corner in IKEA was their picture ledge section. I was so excited to find this because I have been looking for 4'-5' picture ledges everywhere that won't break the bank. I bought three of their largest size (I think it's 5') in a black wood finish at just $19.99! You can't beat that! Whoo Hoo! Now that I could finally start this picture ledge gallery project, I had to make the final decision on where to put it. After a lot of having my husband walk around with this giant ledge, holding it up against the wall, while I give him a yes or a no, we decided that the best place was going to be this huge bare wall we have in the family room. It's sort of like our foyer in a way. Since we tend to come in through the garage, you enter into the house to a big hallway with a bare wall staring at you. We thought this would be a great place to display some great art and family pictures. This is the basic idea of what we're going for: *Photo courtesy of Lime in the Coconut
*Photo from Pottery Barn

Now that I have the shelves, little by little I will add to them with frames of different finishes and sizes. At IKEA I started off our collection with some black, espresso, and silver frames. What I love about these pictures is the lighting! Both have some kind of accent lighting, so eventually, we're going to install some track lighting maybe like this where our foyer lamp currently is: