Decorating With Family Photos

This is a guest post from regular contributor, Natalie LeBlanc-Dawson, who blogs at  www.becominggranola.com . 

People have very different ways of decorating their home. Some put up portraits. Some display trinkets.

Whenever we went away anywhere, even if it was just camping for the weekend, we’d take a nice picture or buy a print as a reminder. So when we first moved into our home in 2008, we put up prints from these various vacation spots.

It was nice at the time.

Becoming a family

When you have your first child, you tend to go over board. And that we did. We had a huge poster-sized frame in our living room full of little pictures of our Abigail. We were proud parents. We got some simple family photos done to sprinkle around the house as well.

Finger painting is a very exciting craft to do with your children. Naturally, we have framed handprint paintings around the house as well.

When she started preschool and came home with decent looking art projects, we stuck those to the wall going up the stairs to add a little something to our bland white walls (which reminds me to hire painters this summer!)

Typical 2nd child

I do not think there is a single photo of our son anywhere in our home. We have a homecoming photo that made the newspaper a couple years ago, but all you can see is the back of his head. I feel bad, but I honestly do not think we are the only family with this problem. Many things fall to the side when additional children are added to the mix.

Determined to showcase my loves

With the birth of our third child weeks away, I am determined to showcase my family through photos throughout our home. Now, putting photos up everywhere can be a daunting task. And I do not necessarily want to go through the work and cost of getting prints made to then have to replace many of them when Baby3 arrives. So I have decided to concentrate on our master bedroom first.

It has taken a bit of time, but I have almost purged all the clutter from our bedroom. No unnecessary shelving units. We now have a blank canvas along the back wall. Since I will be spending many hours during the night awake with a baby over the next while, I would love to finally LOVE being in our bedroom.

I would love to get some candid family photos done when Baby3 is a couple weeks old. We are not fans of posed portraits so we should be able to come up with a nice one. I’m thinking a large family one centered on the back wall, with more photos of the kids on either side.

I was thinking of hanging something above the crib but since that wall is shared with Zachary’s room, I would be afraid of him banging on the wall and having something fall. So I will look at inspirational wall decals instead.

Next would be our living room. I want to get rid of the dust-collecting knick knacks on the shelves and put up more frames. Single frames with a couple of our favourite shots of each kid would be easy to keep updated.

We also have a large digital frame that I’d love to put up but I am very unsure as to where since it needs to be close to an electrical outlet.

Displaying kids’ art

Our first two children are polar opposites of each other. Abigail is extremely artsy and loves to draw. And I’ve got to say that for a 5 year old, she can be quite precise with her work when she wants to. Zachary is our little Tasmanian devil. Everything he tends to do ends in chaos. But despite their differences, I would still love for art from both of them to be displayed.

I have a bunch of small 4×6 wooden frames. I would love to give each kid a couple of frames and let them go at it with paint, glitter, and stickers. I think the contrast between the two sets would be lovely and would add a perfect touch to our very boring stairway.

Even writing all these plans out, I am realizing that it will take a while for them to all take place. I’m hoping that by at least writing them down, hanging up the frames in their respective spots, and printing out some cute shots on regular paper, it will add some warmth to our walls while we wait for better portraits be be taken with Baby3.

Hi! I’m Natalie.
I’m a navy wife and mother to 2 wonderful kids with another on the way. When I’m not running or crocheting, I’m trying to figure out the best way to organize our crazy life all while trying to remain calm and feeding everyone real food. I blog atBecoming Granola, and you can find me on Facebook too.