Family Wall

Our new house has been such a blessing!!!!! I am loving getting my family more and more settled and organized.

At the end of summer we got family pictures and Pinterest was my inspiration. I love getting ideas and then making them my own.

I really wanted to hang some pictures but knowing that we have five growing children pictures get outdated really quick around here. We have done canvas before and it's beautiful but what do you do with them when you need to replace them? I also didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on our walls.

What's awesome about this project is my dad has a mass amount of extra wood just lying around in his shop. Ever since I was a kid he always had scrap wood he would let me do what I wanted with. So after I had ordered 8x8 pictures of my kids I found some Fir Plywood rough sawn that he cut for me a little larger than my 8x8 pictures. I really liked the rough side so I decided to just sand it up some and round the edges. I then stained it with Special Walnut stain and I had ordered some antique brushed clips off of Amazon for under $6 for 15 of them. I screwed the clips into place and added alligator hook to the back to hang and that was it! Now all I have to do is replace them when I update their pictures and well my 8x8's from costco cost just under $8. Pretty cheap and I am in LOVE with the look.

Next, our family wall was first inspired by a Pinterest picture of just a piece of wood and pictures hanging across. I decided on doing two boards again from my dads scraps which I had him cut from one board making two equal sizes. I then stained them and bought eye hooks, sprayed painted them and hooked rope. When I was laying this out on the floor to get a visual I realized I suddenly had more pictures then what would hang on the wood. This is where I decided to add eye hooks from the top of one board and the bottom of the other and create hanging space in between the boards. After hanging them to the wall something just was missing.

Several years ago back at our old house I really wanted trees painted on our family room wall. Our really great adopted uncle who was an amazing artist sat and watched me paint trees while giving me advice on how to make them look more real (also just keeping me company). I would sit in that room and gaze at the trees and I loved just the creativity they brought into the room. Now that our amazing adopted uncle suddenly passed away almost a year and a half ago and with our move it suddenly dawned on me to paint a tree behind all the family pictures. Giving the wall the name, "Family Tree." I have moved the tree art to our new house. Our amazing adopted uncle will never see it but I could invision him sitting in our new hallway with his legs crosses chatting with me while I painted away. When finished I could hear him saying, "Wow Candice, that turned out sooooo great!"