A Twenty-five Framer.

We have been pining after a large collage for ages on a fairly long wall in our upstairs hallway.  The wall connects our bedroom to Ona's nursery, so we walk past it multiple times a day.  Since the dawn of the idea I'd stare at the wall and think about the collage and then shortly after, the blankness would smack me square in the face.  You can see the blank wall before it was painted there in the background::Those are three of the greatest women and the photo was taken about three years ago when we were building the house.   You can see it is a fairly long wall.  Since that photo, it was painted October 2010 and left in a painted blank state for over a year (whoops forgot to photo it), but here is what the collage looked like early on with most of the blank wall still left::We began our frame hunt waaay back in August.  We saw a few frames in  Artful Heart Photography's studio and instantly fell in love.  Yup, picture me shoulder tapping while psst-ing, "Excuse me, where did you purchase those sweet frames.  I LOVE THEM!"  To make a long story short, they (a)are from Organic Bloom, (b)are only available through licensed photographers, (c)are a smidge expensive, but  (d)are outrageously adorable. Please meet June, Ricky, & Fonzie ::please, I know we're nuts about naming inanimate objects, but these beauties came named::Aren't they cute?  We ordered June in 11x17 and Ricky and Fonzie in 5x7, all in white.  Due to option (c), it took us a little longer to budget for the whole collage, which is okay since it took us over three months to collect them all anyways.  Ona and I bummed around a bunch of different Sundays to snag the rest.  She really enjoyed it, can't you tell?She's a good sport.  We purchased a bunch of 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 Sondrum frames from Ikea.  The small frames are 2x3's from Hobby Lobby, and the silver frames are 4x4 from Home Goods.  Then we laid out the frames on the floor to come up with an arrangement we liked.

Unfortunately, the frames sat on the floor for about three weeks and actually had to be picked up, moved, and then laid out again.  Dang, lazy alert. When we finally got around to it, we trimmed pieces of newspaper and hung them on the wall to help us visualize.  What we realized from this is that Kerry and I are both go with the creative flow kind of people.  In the end we just went with what felt right.  We first measured the wall and hung painters tape to outline the space.  Once we did that we centered June in the middle and worked out from there.  It took us about five hours of hanging over the course of two evenings, but we are crazy about how it turned out.Kerry finished hanging the last frame Saturday night, while Ona and I danced around to the Civil Wars radio on Pandora.  Then Sunday, Ona and I filled the frames with all manner of photos.  It is an odd collection of sentimental moments.  Some old, like this old photo of my great-great grandpa's shop in Camden, TN::Some new, like some recently letterpressed art that is special to us::And some just to remember fun moments, like everyone dancing at our wedding reception::Yea, we're totally nuts about it.  I mean so nuts we even went outside in the freezing cold to take a picture of what the collage looked like through our big picture window at night.And then a photo of our ecstatic selves::Here's the collage looking out our bedroom door::And a shot of the view when you walk in the front door::Can you tell that we're obsessed?  Really, we find ourselves just staring up at it.  We think we'll change things out of the frame as our lives and family evolves.  Right now we have some new and some old family photos included and we love that there is a bit of history hanging on our walls.   Again, just to humor us, the full collage ::from blank to twenty-five framer:: again::Can I just add that this is the first full out blog post about something other than our favorite little girl in months.  Having a 3 1/2 month old sure changes your priorities, but I truly loved every moment getting back into blogging.  It is like a breath of fresh air or like the first time you go running for a really long time and your lungs hurt, but feel so good.  Yea, that feeling.