A winter gallery wall and the guidelines we used to create it

We really like to switch up our gallery wall in the living room in order to keep things fresh. If you haven't already read all about our fall set up you can take a look back here. Normally my "winter" photos would consist of the previous years in order to get some snowy ones up on the wall. Luckily, we got a bit of early snow this year and were able to run out to get our Christmas tree (which obviously I was already super late getting because that's how we roll in this household). So we got Haverly all bundled up and ran out with the camera to try and get a few winter photos.

The day after I finished putting together this display and ordering prints, we got hit with more snow!

We ended up having an epic photo session with the dogs while Mitch raked the snow off our roof. I'm so excited to put these into next years yearbook (check out 2016's yearbook here) and up on 2017 winter gallery wall. Who can resist some dog photo's?

He looks so sweet... and then you see the toddler mid fall from him barreling by.

Setting the winter gallery wall  up

Typically, I pick out my biggest print first, then make decisions on my others depending on how they fit with the biggest print. In this case, I went ahead and ordered an instant download from LILAxLOLA's Etsy Shop of this bad boy.

Moose hold a special place in my heart since they were my father's favorite animal. Every year we would get him a new small stuffed animal to ride around on his truck's dash board and "protect him". If he had a spirit animal, I'm sure it was a Moose.

Guidelines are good

Just like in our Fall gallery wall, we have some pieces of art that are currently just staying in place. With the Moose Print and the art staying in place I was provided with some guidelines.

• The rest of the photos needed to loosely fit within the "winter theme"
• Integrate well with the Moose print
• Not clash with the current art pieces (if you can even consider my 7th grade mask with puffy paint "ART")

Constraints always make it easier to make decisions, but they don't eliminate all issues. When I just cannot decide which photo to use, I'll turn to Mitch and give him two to choose from. If he has a strong feeling one way or the other I go with it. The wall doesn't need to be a literal gallery art wall, it just needs to be something that makes us both smile.

Move on to the second largest

At this point a large print has been picked, and all the art work has stayed. Then you'll want to pick the second largest pieces and put them up on the wall in a balanced fashion. That meant I needed a black and white print to balance the Moose on the left side.

Adding a Preset in Lightroom for Black & White Prints

This was a fairly easy change to make since I've previously purchased a set of the Fan Favorites Presets from Pretty Presets. One Click on Matte B&W and I was all set, just made this photo.

Filling in with other pictures

Once I had visual balance, the photos that were left over were easy to choose. Which ones out of my favorite 5-10 would fit well in each frame? I have two 5x5's, and the two 12x12's that just don't take any photo because the square can end up cropping out too much.

I uploaded all of them and started looking at them cropped for 5x5's and then 8x10's, made decisions from what looked best.

Reality Check

You don't have to look hard in these pictures to find some check list items for the living room to-do list. We went ahead and put a speciality finish on our baseboards to cut down on chipping paint from the dogs laying on that wall, and then never painted them again. The Nest thermostat needs some touch up paint from this summer when we installed our central air (the thermostat and smoke detectors were the best decision ever!)

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows us, we like to start projects not finish them. I don't let the unfinished diminish the beauty we find in our funky old house, or our crazy giant lives. In February we will be wrapping up some of these living room checklist items and adding a few additional projects for you to see.

Were spending this holiday weekend watching our family favorites, White Christmas & It's a Wonderful Life, and snuggling with our daughter as much as possible. Has any one else ever noticed how strikingly similar the original Barbie looks to Vera-Ellen in White Christmas?  

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We will be back in January working on our dining room re-do and updating on what we have in store for 2017!

Creating a Classic & Stunning Photo Yearbook

  After we had our daughter Haverly (have-er-lee) I started taking photo's like crazy, even borrowed a friends old DSLR for like a year (until she got together with other family & friends and they bought me my own for a 30th Birthday present). I knew I wanted to create the baby's first yearbook and then got to thinking about how much fun it was as a  young child to look at photos. But we don't really print photos anymore, just hand the few on our gallery wall. So how would Haverly ever get this same experience?

Mitch even grew up with the same experience, his Nana was big on taking photo's of the boys as they grew. She still currently has a photo album per year for there entire childhood.

So I set out to find a classic photobook, that was cost effective, and didn't have so many options my head was spinning. I stumbled upon MontageBook and the process sold me. Three books later (Our photos pre-baby, 2015's yearbook, and Haverly's baby book) and we couldn't be happier with the results.

What to put in your yearbook

Obviously we like these montagebooks or we wouldn't already have three of them, so making a yearbook in December is becoming a tradition of our's, that way we get the book by Christmas (or shortly after if I've been lazy), and they only take about 3-5 days to be printed and sent out.

If your asking "If its a yearbook wouldn't you wait until after the first of the year to order?" Then you would be correct, thats one way of doing things. We happen to like to review the year at Christmas with Haverly looking at pictures.

Therefore, our yearbook goes winter- winter and includes the previous years Christmas. That means our 2016 yearbook will have 2015's Christmas in it and run right up to the first or second week of December 2016.

I try not to take the yearbook too seriously, because then I'll try to make it perfect and you know how that goes... it never gets ordered and looked at because you can't get it just right. Or you miss the sale opportunity because you can't get it just right in time, so your waiting to order....and waiting.

Our "list" of must haves for the yearbook

• Events (Weddings, Birthdays)
• Milestones (Promotions, Births, Graduations)
• Projects (Remodel Before & Afters, DIY's)
• Time Sensitive (Pictures of your child playing with a toy they love and will outgrow by next year)
• The Everyday (photos that you uploaded to Facebook & Instagram) This is about real life, not just picture perfect poses.

In one of our books we put pictures of the litter our Sadie & Freeway made. Obviously these are not "our" dogs anymore, but we wouldn't want to miss telling Haverly about that time we were German Shepherd Breeders and how much fun it was to experience that.

Also, our porch remodel we went through right after Haverly was born (like two weeks after!) It was such a significant time in our lives because it has changed the way we live in this household, we want to remember that.

I'm sure as we continue archiving our projects with the blog we may not put as many examples of projects in our yearbooks, but it still is nice for us to look back on some adventures.

How we Layout our Yearbook

This is similar to if you wanted to scrapbook or print and put together a photo album yourself. You can have:

• Monthly spreads
• Seasonal Sections
• Chronological Order
• All Mixed up

I really wanted to go through all our pictures monthly and create spreads this year, but every month came to an end , and I hadn't done the work. Therefore, I just took all my photos for the year filed by date and start narrowing down from there.

Managing your photo collection to make a yearbook

Lightroom

I've been using Lightroom for a few months and couldn't live without it. It catalogs all of my photos and I can create collections, keywords, etc. to keep things organized. I also do all of my edits in Lightroom at this point (I haven't gotten into Photoshop much yet).

I won't go in to too much detail but I will say if your looking for a program that can handle your ever growing collection of photos this is wonderful and at just 10$ a month for it, and Photoshop CC, so you can start editing and creating some amazing photos.

Apple Photos or iPhone

Before Lightroom I just used my apple photos app to manage and organize everything. Without having started this blog I may have always stuck with the photos app, it was just so intuitive and easy to use.

Amazon Prime Photos

If you don't have a Mac or iPhone and subsequently can't use apple's photos app, Amazon Prime photos has unlimited storage (with your prime membership) and it seems they just updated the app. All my phone's photos get backed up to Amazon as do most of my computers photos. The really nice thing about Amazon's photo storage is that Montagebook.com with pull directly from Amazon so you don't have to upload photos from your computer unless you would like too.

Using Filters or Presets

Most of us have used filters in one social media account or another, but they can tend to make our photos look a little fake. I've found a few options that work really well.

• Lightroom CC already has presets loaded and you can start playing around there.
• Pretty Presets has presets for Lightroom that have worked very well for me thus far.
• VSCO is an robust app that you can use to apply filters to your photos and then adjust the intensity of the filter. I've used this app on many photos for our yearbooks and various social media posts.

Although you could theoretically apply one filter to all of your photos in Lightroom CC , I wouldn't recommend it. Your yearbook will be uniform, but some pictures will just loose there "reality", and the whole point of a yearbook is to accurately depict life correct?

So I use filters for my black and whites, and possibly for a yearbook spread or seasonal section.  I would pull all of my outside fall photos and apply a filter , and all my winter with another filter, etc.

How the process works with MontageBook

You Upload

• Lightroom- I started with my 2016 photos, narrowed them down, and imported into MontageBook.com. This is the base of my yearbook, after I've uploaded and changed some of the yearbook pages I then...
• Facebook- Look in my Facebook for any photos someone else possible posted that I didn't take or an event like a friends Wedding.
• Amazon Prime- Finally I'll take a look at these photos for anything amazing from my I-phone that really needs to be in our yearbook to complete it.

I've found that your uploads from your computer go into Montagebook by date, while subsequent uploads for Facebook, Amazon, or the other apps will not be added in chronological order. They must just get uploaded that way because they were organized chronologically.

Keep that in mind, if everything is mixed and you really wanted it to build in chronological order you will have a lot of moving photos on your hands.

All in all, its really easy to get your photos onto the website, and they will auto create the pages for you to start with.

Front cover & Options

How can you not fall in love with a simple, streamlined, and fun cover like these? Its really easy to swap out photos .

You can also create a whole other layout to your cover page by just hitting shuffle.

Typically I'll go through and hit the shuffle until I find a cover that is close to complete. Then I go ahead and move a few of the photos in or out.

Voila! A truly unique cover page with all your favorites.

Layout Themes

You can choose from a variety of themes for the layout of your photobook (White with gold, color blocking, modern patterns, grunge, geometric, etc). We've personally only ever used the magazine white and portfolio white for their simplicity and professional look.

The white space in this portfolio white can really help your photos pop

But a background can be nice if you are doing something specific like a baby book. Below the watercolor theme is really fun, especially for summer photos.

Layout

• This process is almost done for you, especially if you can get over having everything be perfect and just go with it. In other programs it seems you have to change the photos and rearrange a lot. You end up sick of the photos you took before you even order the books!

Heres the first pages straight from the app doing its thing:

This page should be relocated it's off chronologically but not by much. Montage book even makes that change simple and easy. You can grab thumbnails of the pages and move them around.

Here is a winter scene from last year, MontageBook took all of the photos and made sure they were together. Not much I would have to do to edit something like this.

Layout changes

If you want to change around the layout of a particular spread, it as easy as hitting the button change layout.

Below I deleted a photo off the page (I can always grab it and add it back into the book at anytime).

And here I hit the change layout button again to get something I liked.

Ordering

Once your all done with a few adjustments, your all set to order. They have only a few extra options: a storage box, and premium paper. That makes ordering simple, and the end result a classic photo book with just enough variation.

We've found the 8x8's to be the perfect size, substantial enough without being this huge book that will never fit on a bookcase. When I ordered our 2016 yearbook the estimated delivery was mere 5 days later!

Reality Check

Although these are very fairly priced for the quality of product you get, I have to cut down how many photos I upload. The book's come with 20 pages and any after that would be extra (Even one spread for each month of the year will put you over the 20 pages). So you can easily get above and beyond the base price for the books.

Our "Love Story" inspired German Shepherd entry way art

Meet Trigger our idyllic German Shepherd-He was 10 1/2 when he passed away on Mitch's birthday in 2016. He was smart, loved people, especially our daughter Haverly (have-er-lee).

If you hadn’t already figured it out, we're German Shepherd people. Without Mitch having had his Shepherd, Trigger, and me throwing stick in an open field with my Shepherd, Monte, we may have never met.

The love story

Now, I knew within minutes of Mitch stopping that he would be the man I would marry. Even before I knew I would marry this man, I feared for his well-being which was currently at high risk.

Monte was a little protective of me and wasn’t great with men in uniform (don’t even ask how I already knew this). So you can imagine my relief when instead of me dragging Monte away from this officer, he was drinking water from his water bottle and acting like Rin-Tin-Tin or something. Rin-Tin-Tin.... Monte was not, in looks or his wild at heart behavior.

And she still has a nack for owning the craziest shepherds like our Freeway.He is a goof...

So as it turned out, Monte was that catalyst that brought us together. He seemed to have the same reaction to Mitch as I did, love at first sight. Right away we discussed needing our dogs to meet, and which one had larger ears which was of course Monte.

Probably Susie’s first win, I should have known then that it was the first of many…..

So the Shepherd's meeting would have to be just as wonderful as our idealic meeting, right? If you did, you guessed wrong. They barely tolerated one another, and hated, really hated, to touch one another.

Taking & Editing the Photos

So if you ask what would compel me to make a giant print of our dog to hang in our entryway instead of something useful like a mirror?

Like so many of you, we’re dog people, saying "Hello" with a woof somehow tells our story.

My advice for rangling your dog to actually take a photo like this is limited, because in the end I still needed Mitch to help me get him to hold still long enough to take a decent picture.

Eventually we got a couple of good photos which I took against our white entry wall so I could easily take the background out in Photoshop or Pixlr.

We picked Trigger as the subject because we knew he wouldn’t be around forever. But the type of dog he was really represented the type of people we are and like to be (yep I just compared our family to a dog). He was just as amazing as he looks, a dog that would take a bullet for you if need be.

Or snuggle with our daughter while mommy tries her hand at new born photography.

I didn’t want his whole face in focus so Mitch took the pick between the face in focus and his nose in focus. In the end I ordered the 20 x 30 print with his nose in focus on gloss paper. I wouldn’t do gloss again because we always have too much glare from our front door. Trying to take pictures of it for you all to see in place was significantly difficult.

Reality Check

The print didn’t end up perfect. We reused and older frame that has a few digs and scratches, and the glare from the gloss is annoying. I couldn’t be happier and felt the need to get this project finished, even if it wasn't perfect. Our Trig-Man passed away not 6 months later. Had I have waited after the initial idea popped up, we may not have this amazing reminder of him. And, if Mitch hadn’t had his Shepherd we may never have met.

I'd love to hear a bit about how others have honored beloved pets, leave some comments below please!

Repurposed & Upcycled: Our Industrial Desk

These industrial desk legs mark the start of my obsession with antiquing; specifically at the Brimfield Mass. Antiques show. It also is the start of Mitch cringing everytime he heres about the show “coming up soon”. Everytime I go with the intention of “just looking” and everytime I come back with new projects.

I’ve always had this tendency, but until I found this particular antique show, I've have never had so much inspiration. This show is one of the largest in the country (country, not county).

Finding the industrial legs

I found these amazing legs leaning up against the back of an architectural salvage tent, like they were the cast offs of the bunch. When I asked the gentleman about them he said they came off a 1860’s church bell in upstate New York .

I shelled out $135 which ended being every last cent I had on me, to get as close to the $150 he wanted for them. I was literally standing with my wallet open, no lunch money in my near future, hoping to god he would take the $135. Cue the puppy-dog eyes and we were off!

Refinishing the industrial legs

My original plan was to paint the legs white, for some reason they made sense to me painted. This was a very hard decision to make because most of the appeal of lies in the rustic character. By painting it white I would be taking some of that away and making it modern.

I decided to go with the white to highlight of company lettering Jones & (In those days they didnt bother writing & Co.), soften the industrial look, and to tone down the desk which was destined for such a small room.

So I used appliance enamel paint to cover the cast iron legs after sanding them up a bit. We then secured them together with a board and then created a cleat for the wall along the back of the industrial desk top.

Reality Check

The appliance enamel has pulled away in a few places, giving back some more of the character over time. Thats what always amazes me about a project... it's beauty is revealed in the initial refinishing process, but also over the lifetime of the piece.

Our new fiddle fig and the canvas tote created to house him

I jumped on the fiddle fig train a few weeks ago and bought this beauty. I've had a slight obsession with them for about a year now, but with my tendency to kill plants, I just wasnt sure spending the money was the best idea.

Keeping the fiddle fig alive

In my defense I usually have help killing the plants in this house. One (or all) of the four dogs we share our space with, likes to eat dirt from our plants. Not dirt outside, nope, dirt inside that is helping our plants live. Please tell me I’m not the only dog owner who has this problem?

So, this little guy is being sheltered from the crazed dirt eating dogs by living high up on our midcentury cabinet. Now we will have to hope Mitch doesn’t overwater the guy trying to get me a green thumb.

No over-watering this guy got it... but air plants need little water, some need no water, some need occasional water...ill have this over-hydrated in no time....

The DIY canvas tote

I decided to go with a handled canvas bag so I could easily move Mr. Fiddy Fig, (who’s obviously best friends with our large print of Trigger aka Mr. Triggy Trig). I grabed the fabric leftovers from our laundry room wall-paper project and liked the added texture without too much color to compete with the bright green leaves.

Reality Check

Perfection it is not, its really hard to sew a round bottom on things! For me it wasn’t about having every detail be perfect, it was about the creation, learning, and having a fun time. It certainly works well for grabbing those leather handles and moving him around the house to get extra light.

What have you worked on recently (perfect or not) that your proud of, I’d love to hear your story?

A small living room gets seasonal updates with our gallery wall

How many is too many?

I have to admit, I’ve got a hoarding problem, hoarding of picture frames for a future Gallery Wall. Seriously, I’ve been collecting picture frames since college (which I’m purposefully omitting how long its been since I went off to school). I already had a collection big enough for a gallery wall in our livingroom when we first bought this place in 2010, so I had Mitch spray paint all the frames brown. Yep thats right, brown, the most boring matchy matchy thing I could think of.

I’m sure you already guessed that it didn’t take but two seconds for me to hate an all brown gallery wall; what was I thinking anyways?

Embracing the eclectic

I’ve always been the eclectic collector type. That's the reason I had all these unique frames to begin with, but I’ve also always had a bit of a problem embracing that crazy eclectic side. So the brown, matchy matchy frames stayed up, for way to long. When I took them down for a new paint color on our walls, I even stored them all wrapped in paper as to not get damaged so I could use again, possibly all white!

Thankfully, I came to my senses while going through the Magic Of Tidying process last year. All the frames got donated (but should have been burned), so I could start fresh with a new gallery wall design. By new I certainly don’t mean all brand new frames or items, but new and fresh; as to not fall into the big black hole of matchy matchy.

What do photographers do with all these family pictures?

Around the same time I pulled down the brown frames I had also taken about a million pictures of my new born girl, Haverly. Which I’m pretty sure, given my facebook feed, every single parent does.

The pictures were actually starting to turn out really great and I was wondering, "what do photographers do with all of these wonderful pictures of their families?". I vowed that if I was going to take the time to create these beautiful photos, I wouldn’t just let them sit in the digital world.

While sipping my morning coffee and looking at these photos and items, they remind me of so much to be grateful for. So, the easiest way I’ve found to keep the wall fresh with these beautiful pictures, has been to rotate them seasonally.

Finding Inspiration

So I set out to find some examples of gallery walls I liked and found a couple floor to ceiling walls I just loved.

Photo by Mary Prince Photography - Design by Jennifer Clapp

Above the art and frames seemed so cultivated and eclectic but didn't seem to overwhelm the space.

Design by Turnham Designs

It seems many of the photos hung are actually artwork and while I have a few pieces, the majority are photographs.

Photo by Elizabeth Metcalfe Interiors & Design Inc.

The photo above caught my eye because of the clean lines, with all those photos I worried too many frames and colors would take over our small house.

So I ended up with a mix of all my inspirations. Almost all the way ceiling to floor, mostly white frames with some pops of color in the art and photos.

Putting together the Gallery Wall

The very first thing I did was went shopping, in my very own home. I grabbed the old bins and boxes that have all those little items I’ve found, inherited, or saved over all these years. If it made my heart sing and I could hang it on the wall; well first it went in the gallery wall pile. I had five things that were unique and that spoke to our family by the time I was done.

• An old mask I made in middle school with my Dad
• Six of my favorite cigar labels from a collection I inherited from my father
• A random wood frame that caught my attention (I still need to figure out what I would like in it)
• A piece of art dipicting our house  (Our neighbor gave this to me when Haverly was born)
• The canvas POW/MIA print that was given to me years ago when I was in JROTC.

Then I grabbed my Mom and went on a little trip to Ikea for frames.

 Every husband's dream to hear....IKEA

I first picked out the few frames I would need for specific peices I’d have up year round. Like the art our neighbor created for us depicting our house (on a day with such an amazing sunset).

I also went ahead and picked a large frame at 24” x 36”. I knew that in order to have a full sized gallery wall that potentially went completely floor to ceiling I would need some larger peices. That way I didn’t overwhelm the space with too many small frames of all different shapes and sizes. I also picked up a few 20x20’s and 12x12’s in all white, that way the pieces I already had at home could really pop.

Once I had all the frames I thought would work in the space I went ahead and layed out the gallery wall both on the computer in my design software, and on the wall with brown craft paper.

Laying out the Gallery Wall

If you’re really unsure of how to layout a large scale gallery wall then just start doing it. All the brown paper in the world isn’t going to help you if you can’t visualize the outcome. The picture here shows my layout with all the old brown frames I still had.

Start putting the holes in the wall (yep, you heard that right).  You will quickly see what you hate. As soon as you see what you hate, you can narrow down too what you like.

What are some holes to fill at the end of the project from you moving things around? Otherwise your standing around with brown paper cut-outs and going crazy trying to make sure it will be “perfect” from the start.

New Season, Fresh Start

Since the orginal gallery wall was created, switching over to a different “seasons” pictures has been relatively easy. I just go through all of my favorite photos for what ever theme I currently want. Edit them and potentially put a preset in Adobe lightroom. Finally upload them to print. This last time I switched to a fall themed wall it only cost me $24 to get all of the new prints from Costco’s photo center, including the big print of our daughter Haverly.

For our family, printing new photos every couple of months (or longer if I just cant find the time), is worth the effort and money. We want to feel a sense of awe with our small space and our lives. That's accomplished with a quick style change on our gallery wall.

Reality Check

The ratio of dogs-to-house has always made dust and dander an issue. We are constantly vacuuming and dusting and cleaning it seems. The white frames get very dirty and show all the dust right away. I just run lightly damp rag along the edges to clean them up. I have a feeling these white frames could look dated  a lot sooner than I think because of the amount of dust we have to clean off them.

Anybody else have some good ideas for displaying photos in such a small house?