Picture this

So we have this enormous blank space on the wall leading upstairs to the second floor of our house, and lately it has been crying out for some attention every time I pass it by.

See?  BLAH.

I had thought many times about how I wanted to adorn it with lots of pictures, but the task seemed too overwhelming to start and I just never got around to it.  But a few weeks ago when I was ordering our recent batch of pictures from the past couple of months, I found within myself the motivation to knock out Phase 1: Selecting Pictures, and so the project was set in motion.

We received all the pictures last Friday, and then I got intimidated all over again thinking about Phase 2: Finding Picture Frames, so I was tempted to put it off.  Lucky for me, a random trip to Target on Wednesday morning led me to a shelf of simple black frames, all for under $3 a piece!  (I had originally envisioned finding more exciting mix-and-match frames, but since that task seemed pretty daunting, I was happy to give that dream up in favor of saving money.)  I snatched up an armful of those bad boys and set out to tackle Phase 3: Designing the Gallery Wall (although I am hesitant to actually refer to it as a "gallery wall" because I feel that implies it is something really fancy or artsy, and neither of those adjectives really applies to me or my decorating sense).

I knew that simply arranging the frames on a table or floor wouldn't help me get the visual I needed, so I put on my thinking cap and busted about my Microsoft Word skills.  I counted how many frames I need by size and orientation, pasted a bunch of rectangles into a document accordingly, and then arranged them to my liking.  I'm not going to lie to you: creating this made me feel like a genius.

From there, it was super easy to choose which pictures would go in each frame, so then it was time for Phase 4: Hanging the Pictures.  I had seen tutorials on Pinterest about tracing the frames on paper and marking where you want them to hang and then nailing it in on the paper on the wall and OH MY WORD THIS IS ENTIRELY TOO COMPLICATED.  So we just started with hanging the middle picture and then worked our way around it like a puzzle.  And by "we", I mean Wade did the manual labor while I kept an eye on this little one who was really wanting to help.

A little tweaking with the spacing, a little rearranging... and voilà!  We have a finished product.  

Well, finished for now anyway... it looks a little scrawny for my liking, but this way we have room to grow, right?  I'm just proud of myself for finally tackling this project (with Wade's help, of course).  So, YAY ME.

Have a great weekend!