Sprucing up the old homestead

The wall above our tv has been empty since we moved in.  It always takes me a long time to put up wall decorations after we move somewhere but this wall was taking longer than usual because I didn't know what I wanted to put there.  I decided that I wanted a Family wall.  Kind of a family tree wall.  There are a lot of Aunts, Uncles and cousins on both sides and I wanted my boys to know who was who and how they were related.  I pondered upon my idea for many months.  I found the perfect frames to go with it and finally had everything I needed.  Then I had to figure out how I wanted to lay it out.  Before I go any farther, I must mention that my Sister-in-Law, Heather, was super helpful while I was working this all out.  We decided that it was ready to implement.

 First, I traced all the pictures onto cardboard, cut them out, and taped them where I wanted them to be on the wall.  To give you an idea how long I had been thinking about this, this picture was taken in March.  I ended up leaving the cut outs up for several months.  I'm not sure what I was waiting for, maybe I wasn't ready for it to be permanent.

 Finally, I just did it.  So our family is in the middle and on the left is all my siblings and their families.  I was so happy that a picture frame exists with exactly seven openings.  Then my parents, and my grandparents.  On the right is Jaaromy's family with the same pattern.  I like that it's kind of random.  I figured that my huge sibling frame would balance with Jaaromy's three pairs of Grandparents.  I think it does, in a way.  Below our family picture is a Families are Forever picture.  I've had it for a long time, but I think I'd eventually like to get something a little more contemporary.  But I don't know what.  I would also like to get two 8x10's of both my and Jaaromy's family while we were young, with no spouses or anything.  I think it would help my boys remember which Aunt or Uncle belongs to who and who is a sibling and who is a spouse.

Our family picture had been in the upstairs hall before I moved it downstairs so now I needed to find something to fill that spot.  I loved an idea I saw on a website a couple of years ago where they used parts of the temple to spell out a last name.  I've seen it since at Deseret Book but they were so expensive.  I decided to make my own.  This is also an idea that I've been pondering upon for a long time.  We took a trip down to temple square for family night back in March.  We managed to find all the letters we needed before it got too dark.  The Z was obviously the trickiest one, but I think we made it work.

In the original I saw they had "Built Upon a Firm Foundation" carved into the matting.  After weighing my options, I decided to just get a frame and some vinyl lettering.  Like the family wall, I practiced with taped up paper first.

I decided I was ready to get the vinyl.  It was smaller than I had expected but I decided it would work.  I taped up the lettering first to make sure it would work, of course.  This was a very gradual process.  I think each of these stages lasted a month or two at least.

Finally, I decided I was ready to make it permanent.  It was a little tricky getting it to stay on the wall while I peeled off the top strip, but I got it to stay.

So, there you have it.  A project nine months in the making.  I'm happy with how it turned out.