Framing the Issue

Now that we are starting to get the furniture settled a little bit, we can begin hanging some things on the walls.  Since Landon had a grand total of one thing hanging on the walls at his house in Lexington, despite living there for several years, it's been mostly up to me to figure out where to put things.  Luckily, a few weekends ago my Dad and Step-Mom came to visit and, while the guys were working on tiling the floor of the master bathroom, Kathy and I hung up some frames.

The one wall that I was having the most trouble figuring out what to do with the stretch of wall in between the craft room door and the first door to the family room.  It's in the foot path to the kitchen area, and so we can't put any furniture there, but I wanted something there since it's one of the first things you see when you walk in the front door.

While I was showing Kathy the collection of frames that we had, she mentioned the idea of doing a whole grouping of frames on that wall.  And we went to work.  We started with the one piece of art that Landon had, a photo he took in Maine, and worked off of that.

We added a poster I was given as a high school graduation gift many years ago as well as a framed score sheet from a game of hearts that was a college graduation gift from my church group.

Once we had the three major pieces, we tried to find some things to work with them, but there wasn't really anything that fit just right.  I went a few days later and got a new frame for my lighthouse poster as well as a square shadow box frame for and a regular 5 x 7 picture frame.

I found a photo I had taken in Charleston, SC for the small frame and balanced it out with another frame the same size that we already had in which I put the score card from a game of mini-golf that Landon and I played on our second date.

As for the square frame, I decided to use a project idea that I got from the Young House Love Book--Project 124 "Whip up some Custom State Art".  I found an outline of Kentucky online and downloaded it and sized it to the dimensions I wanted.  Then I printed it out and traced it onto some scrapbook paper I found at JoAnn's for $0.69.  I used some blue scrapbook paper as the background and then mounted the outline in the center to get a really nice (and coordinating) piece of art that cost about $15--nearly all for the frame.

I was the perfect thing to finish off the grouping and now I love looking at my wall of art when I come home every day.

We may eventually add more to the bottom, but for now I like it.  And, since it's nearly the only thing we have hanging on our walls at the moment, it makes things feel a little more like home.