If you’ve been reading my monthly life re-cap posts, then you know that I’ve been talking about hanging a new gallery wall in the living room for months (seriously, I talked about it here, here, here and here.) The old gallery wall we had in there didn’t really have a lot of personality,  I didn’t really like the frames, and it was a little too small for the size of the wall. I’ve wanted to change it out for a few years now, but I didn’t take the old frames down until this summer when we painted the living room. That wall has just been sitting empty for the last few months, until now:

Sorry for all the glares on the frames. There is a wall of windows opposite these, so getting shots without a glare is impossible! I’m really happy with how this turned out though. I think it is so much more interesting and meaningful now.

“I love you” print hand-lettered by me, my favorite vintage photo of my grandparents, one of my first surface pattern designs (!!!), a test sheet out of my watercolor sketchbook (that one will probably change eventually, I just put that in for now), an elephant print  that reminds me of my Mamaw (she collected little elephant figurines and that print reminds me of a shirt she used to wear), “Yours Sincerely,” painting I did a few years ago, my favorite picture of my sisters/nieces/nephew that I took when we were in Puerto Rico (with a stray cat), “It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful” print from The Nester, a gold skeleton key that opened my childhood bedroom door (and was the official key for our secret club), a photo I took of my childhood front yard when I was home for my Papaw’s funeral last Spring, and my final drawing for the first art class I ever took at Tulane.

I also love the more neutral color palette of this gallery wall. I love the gold/wood/white frames and the black and white photos and prints. Now let’s just all imagine that couch is really a deep grey, clean lined, velvet sectional…

Meanwhile, Violet is all like, “Ma, we all know who the real attraction in this room is…”