Collage

I have wanted to have a collage wall since... well, since forever. I have always thought it would be too expensive to print all the pictures and frame everything and then too much work to arrange and hang everything, so I've always just dreamed of having it. I finally got the motivation to actually do it when I was walking around Goodwill and noticed their picture/frame section. After glancing at all the frames and their cheap prices (and knowing their 50% off everything Saturday was coming up), I decided that I would just finally break down and do it. It took a few different stores and a few days to collect all the frames I wanted, one can of black spray paint, a few hours of texting my sisters to get the layout just right and I finally had my collage ready to fill with pictures.

Getting the pictures was the most difficult part of the project. I ended up looking through all my old pictures on the computer and chose a few of my favorite ones, being sure that no child was over or under-represented. I wanted to make sure that a few pictures even had the parents in them. I had to make sure I had the correct orientation- landscape or portrait- for each of the pictures and that there weren't too many of one child in a specific section of the collage. Wow! It was a lot of work! It took at least a month to do it from start to finish. In the end, I was left with one frame, the largest one, that was completely empty. I didn't have a single picture to put in it that I thought would be worthy of its size. So, I took the kids out to take pictures in the 110 degree heat.

Sound familiar? Yup, that is how I disguised taking the Father's Day pictures. I told Ryan we were getting a picture for the last frame and didn't mention anything about the other pictures that we took. We took them at the county library by the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert. A bunch of elderly people kept walking by commenting on how cute the kids were and asked if I wanted them to take the picture so I could be in it too. I kindly thanked them for their generosity and told them it was for Father's Day so I wouldn't need to be in it. After that, I could hear all the elderly people (new ones) walking up talking to each other about how we are doing something for Father's Day. I thought it was funny how fast word spread between all of the elderly people at the library. There was one group of ladies that just couldn't get over how cute the kids were and decided to stand behind me and just talk about the kids. It was adorable. I want to be an old grandma like that some day. The ladies did a fantastic job of distracting the kids from how miserably hot it was and I was actually able to get a really good picture of the kids. It's actually my all-time favorite picture of the kids and I am glad it gets such a big frame to hold it.

The only thing my collage is missing is some kind of trinket or sconce or something on each side to make it not look so boxy. Overall, I am in love with it. I love being able to look at my beautiful family each day and just reminisce and cry at all the happy memories I have. Each day I feel so overwhelmed with joy when I think about how blessed I am to have my husband and children and be where we are at in our life right now.