I decided to change my living room and dining room around a few weeks ago. Our dining room was being overrun by, well, everything, so I moved the piano into the living room, some bookshelves out completely, and a giant bookshelf over. I had lots of little photos around so I decided to hang them in a rectangle over the sofa in the living room.
I've had these pictures for years — photos of me as a baby, Michael as a little boy, my Grandma Ieronemo when she was young , and my mom and sisters and me at Alicia's bridal shower. I still love looking at all of them.
Some make me smile, like the one of my dad with his band from the 60's. Some break my heart a little bit, like the one of my dad smiling, a few months before he died. But it's nice to have all of my favorite people together here on this wall.
I first saw this idea in an issue of Martha Stewart awhile ago and found some instructions from their website here. I know there are better instructions somewhere but I couldn't find them online.
Here's what I did:
- Taped together sheets of newspaper to create the size and shape of the rectangle that I wanted.
- Put the paper template on the floor and arranged the pictures starting with the corners and outside edges first.
- Outlined each picture frame with marker onto the paper template and wrote little notes in each space so I would remember which picture went where.
- Measured the placement of each hook on each frame (or pulled the hanging wire tight) and made a mark in its corresponding spot on the template. (That was sort of tedious.)
- Taped my paper template up on the wall using a level to make sure it was all straight and good.
- Hammered the nails right through the marks on the paper then ripped the template off of the wall being careful not to rip the template too much because I needed my notes to tell me what picture was going where.
- Fussed with all the frames until they were relatively straight.
What do you think?


