Decorating the Fireplace with Pictures

It’s the last day! I’m sad…I’m happy…it’s time. I’m sharing my space at 3pm central today, so come back then!

But first, a post from one of my most favorite bloggers, whom I still haven’t had a change to meet in real life~~~~

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My name is Shawni and I blog at 71toes.com.I am a big, huge believer in decorating with portraits so I’m so honored Kristen would ask me to guest post again this year.

To me, what you put on your walls is like what you wear.  It defines you/your family.  It can create emotion.  It can remind you of what’s most important in life.

Basically I believe what’s on your walls has power (much more about that on a post about “walls” on my blog over here).

We have personalized the walls in our home with what makes us “us.”

We have photos that remind us of our travels all decked out in old window frames:

(much more on that over here).

We have pictures of our children lining our stairs (here along with how we put quotes on the walls).

We have our family motto hanging prominently above our fireplace:

(I know, not photography but it still fits my “importance of walls” point…more on that here).

We even have semi-pictures (silhouettes) of our kids in our entryway:

(more on that over here)

Lately I’ve been thinking even more about “walls” and how I want to make a statement with them because we’re building an new home.

There are all kinds of ideas I have torn out of magazines filling up my desk and pinned on trusty Pinterest.  But the one I want to share today is decorating with portraits on our new fireplace wall.

This is a little unlike the wonderfully inspiring finished off, tied-up-with-a-bow posts Kristen has been sharing this month because the wall I want to share isn’t done yet!

But I still wanted to share my ideas of what I’m hoping it will become because it’s right down the “decorating with portraits” alley!

For the whole history saga of how our fireplace wall got to this point, click over to this post here, but I’m going to shortcut you to how it looks today:

There we go.

A little on the plain side, right?

Well, just imagine it with huge photographs on those shelves and on top of the cabinets.  In designing this wall I was so inspired by shallow shelves with frames resting on them like this:

And I also really wanted to add color like this:

So my plan is to merge the two together and get something similar to this:

(Let’s just imagine that the television is in the middle and those pictures are not photoshopped in but actually resting against the wall.)

I want to mix black & white and color.  I think I will do some black picture frames and some unframed stretched on huge canvases.  I want to display pictures of our travels so that my children can have trips like this one in the forefront of their minds.  I want to display some of our favorite places.  And most importantly I want to display love.

Because really, all you need is love.  And if it’s shouting at you from your walls, well, it kind of reminds you to love those people closest to you just a little bit bigger and louder.

Maybe Kristen will let me come back and give you an update when we really get this wall done, but for now, I want to wish everyone (including me) happy decorating with portraits in our own way to bring that love into our homes just a little more.

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Thank you, Shawni! That projected fireplace looks fabulous, I’d LOVE to have you come back and share when it’s all finished! If you haven’t been to Shawni’s site, you must carve out some time to jump right in, and soak up the goodness she shares about magnifying our most important role–mother. It’s one of my fave’s for inspiration.

Today, I’m giving away my Say NO to Auto beginner Workshop Video and e-books to 3 lucky winners!!! Do YOU have a fancy camera that you don’t know how to use? Want to take more beautiful pictures of your family?? Check it out and enter!

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