Kitchen Wall Art for the Slightly (or very) Nerdy

I have a confession to make. I'm a bit of a nerd. This is something that took me a while to accept. But when my nerdiness didn't diminish upon reaching adulthood, I decided to embrace this about myself.

Now, I also married a nerd and he's much nerdier than I, to be honest. And he's a huge Tolkien fan. I like Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit more than the average person, but he's almost a fanatic. He reads all the books of JRR Tolkien's notes that were compiled and annotated by Christopher Tolkien, his son. I haven't been able to bring myself to do that. (Although, I don't really have to, since hubby dearest shares all the many details with me...)

So, onto the wall art. I've been working on my kitchen recently. We never got it finished before we moved in and after we moved in I had other projects to work on.   Besides that, I kind of hated the colors I painted it. The cornflower blue and bright yellow (which in certain lighting looked like banana Laffy Taffy, which I didn't realize until after we moved in...oops) combo got old very quickly (whatever was I thinking?). I got sick of it, and have just completely changed the look of the room. It's still a work in progress (I have to paint the ceiling and the counter tops yet), but it is definitely looking a lot classier.

Well, I decided I also needed new stuff for the walls. Something far less kitschy or tacky than the cow clock my husband got me when we went to Switzerland (on a high school band trip). It was time for the clock with the udder pendulum to moooo-ve on. My tastes have changed a bit. Definitely for the better. :)

So, after an exhaustive search which yielded nothing I was absolutely satisfied with, I decided to make some of my own. I wanted something vintage, but fun. So I made these:

 The images are from The Graphics Fairy, of course (nest image and spoon image).  I love her blog!  It's definitely one of my favs.

The quotes are both from Tolkien.  The first is from The Hobbit.  If you have read the book, you know where it's from, and if you haven't read it, you should.  It's a great book.  If you are having trouble reading the text it says:  "A box without hinges, key, or lid,/ Yet golden treasure inside is hid."  I bet you can't guess what it is.  :)

The second quote is from the Fellowship of the Ring.  It's from a poem Frodo recites at the inn in Bree.  Tolkien did his own interpretation of "Hey Diddle Diddle," complete with the dish running away with the spoon.  The quote reads:  "And O! the rows of silver dishes/ and the store of silver spoons!/For Sunday there's a special pair,/ And these they polish up with care/ on Saturday afternoons."

I guess the idea was to have something that expressed my husband and I's nerdy selves but wasn't tacky.  I hope that these fit the bill.  :)  I'm going to get frames for them tomorrow and hang them up.  The walls are looking a little bare without the kitschy-ness I had before.  (Even bare walls are an improvement.)

Feel free to download and use these yourself, if you want.  I'm hoping that others enjoy it, too.

Oh, and I will hopefully post the past couple of weeks worth of Project 365 photos sometime during this weekend.  I haven't forgotten to take them.  I just haven't gotten around to blogging about them.  I spent all last week covered in paint and almost no time on my computer.

Have a wonderful weekend!  Enjoy the game, if you are into that kind of thing (remember, I'm a nerd...I'm really not into sports.  Besides, the Bears aren't in the game, so I'm even less interested than I would otherwise be.)    :)

PS - If you are curious, the font on the wall "art" is a free font called ""Schoon."  Well, the punctuation is actually from a font called "Valley Forge," since Schoon doesn't have punctuation.  I had to improvise a bit.