Photo wall

Inspired by our friend, Wendy, and some advice she gave me in a semi-recent post, I decided to follow through on a long-held idea and consolidate most of our family photos on one wall.  I've taken about a zillion photos with my new digital SLR (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) and I had asked Wendy how she chooses the photos she prints, since she's an amazing photographer. 

She suggested picking one or two photos and getting them in large sizes (ie, 16x20) and then designing the rest of the wall around them.  It took some sorting, but in the end it wasn't hard to come up with my current favorite photos of each of our kids.  I then took my second and third choices and ordered those as 5x7s. 

Then, Apa and I went to Ikea and bought a bunch of frames.  Simultaneously, I reorganized our other wall hangings so that my other favorites kid photos (of the kids as babies) are on the same wall but on the other side of the archway to the kitchen.  I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out.  It highlights our kiddos and the nature of our family right now, while also letting the rest of our main living area have more simple, kid-free decorations. 

I took some photos tonight of the new arrangement, and they didn't come out so well, but I'm going to post them anyway.  Yay for new pictures!  And thanks again to Wendy for her advice.  It really helped me get things together in a way that our family will enjoy for a long time to come.

Here's what I came up with:

Here's Teo's section, although it looks much more orange than it really is because I had to turn off the flash...

Here's Tali's section - same thing with the overdone orange effect!

Here's the other side of the archway, with Mateo's one-year-old photos on the left and Tali's cute baby chub on the right