Are You Ready For Some Football?!

In honor of the beginning of the college and NFL football season this weekend, hubby and I decided to FINALLY finish decorating our family room in the basement. It's a finished basement and a great space, but we've just not done the decorating down there that we wanted to. We decided when we bought the place that it would be our football getaway. We are BOTH football fanatics (college and NFL), so what a fitting place to put all of our paraphernalia!

I spent all day yesterday getting frames, canvasses and some more football knick knacks. I had bought the fabric a year ago with the intention of making these very pieces! My beloved Buckeyes (sigh!). I miss them so much!! I attended every home game for years, thanks to hubby's ability to get season tickets. Now that we've moved away, I can only hope to catch them on TV. :-( And, FINALLY, Comcast Cable started carrying the Big 10 Network this year. But, that's another ugly story...

Anyway, the first three photos are of my Buckeyes (GO BUCS!!!). You can click on each photo to get a closer look. I took some old game programs from the games I attended and made copies of the covers. In the first two photos, I attached the tickets from those games and framed them. The photo showing the game against the University of Missouri was hard for me. I graduated from Mizzou and I love my Buckeyes. The Bucs won, so I had to be happy with that. My Tigers gave it a good try, though! The third photo shows a gathering of three covers that I framed. Those will be grouped together when we hang them up (tonight, I hope!).

Then, I moved on to my Bengals. They have not been so good the last couple of years (10 or so...), but we still love them. I had some VERY old programs from their summer training camps which used to be held in my hometown of Wilmington, Ohio. You can see from the dates that these are very old. I took a few selected photos from each and copied those onto fabric. Then, I fused those fabric photos onto the background Bengals fabric. Finally, I stapled the fused Bengals fabric onto some nice canvasses. These are definitely one of a kind art pieces that you won't see anywhere else! ;)

The plan is to hang everything up tonight and get the place ready for tomorrow night, which is opening game for college football. Yes, I watch all college games and NFL games that I can find. Rare for a woman, but what can I say? I was raised on football with my dad catching all the games.

This is just a small gathering of some of the items we are going to place in the family room. I also have: an Indianapolis Colts helmet pennet, a Buckeye flag, a HUGE canvas covered in Bengals fleece, two more framed Buckeyes posters, some Green Bay Packers Cheese mug holders and ball cap, a Bengals beach ball... you'll see when I get it all put together. I'll take photos of the finished football mecca and post those as soon as the room is ready. Stay tuned...