It's official. We're "those" people. You know, the ones who leave their Christmas decorations up for months into the new year. I'm shaking my head in embarrassment. Thankfully we had last Friday's neighborhood party on the books, which forced us to tackle those nagging and often overlooked issues -- like decorations of Christmas past still adorning the walls well into April.

The decorations I'm referring to were the beautifully made calligraphy Christmas carol verses, created by our friend Sarah Bohl. 

We hung these unique works of art  for the Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk Weekend last year, when we were lucky enough to have our humble abode featured on the home tour. And although we managed to take down the live tree back in January, the four frames remained as is, wishing guests tidings of comfort and joy...well after Santa had come and gone.

It's not that I haven't given these frames any thought. In fact, it's quite the contrary. I've debated long and hard over what makes a suitable, year-round replacement, and came up with two finalists. The first -- obtain city maps of four of our favorite vacation destinations (London, Gothenburg, Napa Valley, and Budapest). This concept proved harder than expected. While the visitors bureau in Gothenburg, Sweden was happy to mail me a map, I had a harder time sourcing nice looking samples of the other cities that seemed frame worthy. Sure I could scour eBay, look for a vintage atlas, or source other viable locations so all maps visually seemed to be a "set," but the harder the concept, the less appealing it became.

The second option I had come up with was to frame four of our favorite vacation photos. And since these frames are in the sun porch/kitchen area, I wanted to put a twist on it and frame photos of food and drink, quite apropos for this portion of our home. 

This isn't a tall order in the least, given our love of exploring local cuisine and culture whenever we're abroad. Whether we happen to be dining in off-the-beaten-path cafes, strolling the aisles of local grocery stores, or seeing and sampling goods from vendors at renowned food markets, we can't get enough of both the great tastes and often stunning visuals.

One example of our adventures came last fall when we roamed the aisles of the Great Market Hall in Budapest, Hungary.

Or last summer, when we ate doughnuts at London's Borough Market.

Or in Fall 2011, when we sipped hot apple cider from a stand in Copenhagen's Tivoli Garden. Unfortunately the cider tasted like feet, but we're still grateful for the experience! 

Last week I spent time combing through our Flickr sets, trying to narrow our selection to the top four. It was fun to look back on our treasured vacation memories while working to complete the artwork update. 

My goal in searching was to find examples of foodie scenes that represent places that we visited and enjoyed, but done in a way that was up close and personal with the food, rather than centered on the location where we found the food. In other words, we were trying to find the best poser hipster-esque food photos we'd taken on our various journeys.

If we were true hipsters we would have taken this photo of Cafe DuMonde beignets ironically.

After a bit of searching, I settled on four photos that we both really liked and felt fulfilled our goal of this little project:

• Pastries and cappuccino in Vienna, Austria
  
  
  
  
  
• A cheese vendor in London, England
  
  
  
  
  
• A produce counter in Budapest, Hungary
  
  
  
  
  
• Pretzels and cold mugs of Pilsner Urquell (the local beer of choice) in Prague, Czech Republic
  
  
  

These photos all had that look we were shooting for, but the orientation was landscape on two of the photos. I resolved this by cropping them using the aspect ratio of the two portrait photos. This reduced the resolution a bit, but it wasn't too severe and still maintained good quality. 

After the orientation was set, we had to resolve a little issue with the colors. The colors of the photos varied a bit much from photo to photo and would look out of place all hung on the wall near one another. Given the rise in popularity of photo filters (thank you Instagram) it seems that every photo editing program out there has some level of effect that allows you to modify/age/hipstify your photos in a variety of ways. 

I started to play around with the photos in Flickr using their Aviary service and available filters. After going through the various filters I ended up settling on one call San Cameron, which washes out the photo a bit to make the colors appear a bit more muted. The end result of these photos gave us the look we were after.

Take a look at the end result of the photos from above.

After finishing up the photo editing, we placed an order online with our local Walgreens. Thanks to a great coupon, we picked up four 8x10s for a mere $10.06, 40% off the normal price. I picked them up the next day, and was well on my way to a completed project.

In the hustle and bustle getting ready for our guests, we may or may not have "saved" this project until 15 or so minutes prior to our guests arriving. But there's nothing like working best under pressure, so I got to work on this simple switch out. 

I started by removing the frames from the wall, and opening up the backs. 

I then carefully peeled back the scotch tape, holding the Christmas carol artwork in place. These Christmas pieces are very special to me, so I really wanted to be sure I protected them as much as possible.

With the frames free and clear I secured the enlarged photos in place with some small pieces of tape.

Finally, I neatly tucked the seasonal art behind the matte for safekeeping. This way I know right where I've stored it, and it's in a safe, flat, protected space where I'll be able to easily retrieve them in the future.

In less than ten minutes, I had a new set of framed, personal artwork.

We popped them on the wall before the first guests arrived and had ourselves a special and themed set of vacation mementos celebrating some of our favorite experiences.

There are a few things that I really love about this choice in artwork. 

• I love that the photo effects mute the colors, so they work well with the gray frames, and blend seamlessly into the neutral color palette we established for our kitchen and sun porch. 
• I love that this project cost only ten dollars.
• I love the fact that it commemorates some of our favorite vacation memories. 
• And finally, I love that I walk past these frames several times a day, and can appreciate these photos on a daily basis, rather than keeping them out of sight in a Flickr set or photo album. 

If you're looking for a great way to accessorize with something special and personal, this is a fun way to incorporate your own personal touch in a non traditional way. We didn't need to include our smiling faces waving from some random tourist destinations, instead we focused on the things we remember from our own experiences, and we chose photos that had meaning to us, but applied more generically to the setting. In the end, we're totally thrilled with the results.

Have you done any sort of similar decorating in your home? Perhaps using themed vacation photos from your favorite experiences? Did you go all hipster the way we did and apply some level of photo filters? I'd love to hear what you've been up to.