The biggest problem I encountered in putting this together was finding the other "stuff" to include. Turns out, I'm not incredibly sentimental and I've saved almost NOTHING from the last few years worth of special events, trips, holidays, etc. I had to get a little creative, but I think it all worked out.
I started in the basement, going through a lot of the boxes and bins we moved into the house, mostly looking for frames I could use. I found plenty of frames, but I also found something that ended up making the project work out a lot better than I'd anticipated. I found the copy of our wedding vows that Brance, our good friend and officiant had used on the day of our wedding. He'd written notes all over the typed "script" that I had sent him, and seeing his writing all over those pages brought back such great memories. It was a keepsake I didn't even know I possessed and when I found it, it felt like I'd discovered buried treasure.
I took a quick visit to Goodwill and bought another half dozen or so frames, printed about a million photos at my local CVS and got to work.
I had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning up most of the frames, but it's amazing how just a little Windex can make a huge difference. After that, I set about picking photos for different frames, and going through the various "stuff." I wanted to represent as much of our lives together as I could, but I had so little from the last 3+ years, I had to get creative. For example, I never saved any of our boarding passes from trips (also, I almost always used electronic ones), so I printed out copies of a couple. I got as creative as I could with what I had to work with. In the end, I had enough for two gallery wall collections. The first was wedding-themed with the vows I'd found as the centerpiece:
The vows are in the center frame along with two cards we received from loved ones that day and a wrapper from our favors- soap handmade by my mom. I also framed our invitation (top middle) and the cover of the song book from the sing-along at our wedding (bottom left). The rest are photos from our wedding day. I love how it turned out!
The second gallery wall had a bit of a travel theme to it:
The photos are mostly from various trips we've been on together. Other items include the key to our first home we bought together, boarding passes from one of our trips, a stamp in one of our passports from another trip, a birthday card, the menu from Moxy where we had our first date, foreign money from a few of our trips and a seashell I brought home from our honeymoon in St. Maarten. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get that white frame to sit straight, but other than that, I'm really happy with how the whole installation turned out.
You're probably wondering "Where's Percy?" Well, I made a little corner just for him in our living room:
I liked working on this project because it gave me an afternoon to reflect on all the blessings I have in my life and how fortunate I am to be building a life together with Sam (and Percy). I also like the idea of creating more gallery walls like these years from now. Maybe I'll be better about holding on to sentimental things so that I'm not left scrounging for items next time!
Let me know what you think about this project. Would you do something like this in your own home? What kind of objects would you include? I wish I had more 3-dimensional things to include, but maybe someday I will!
Thanks for reading!
XOXO
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