Big Move!

I am sorry to those of you that are regular readers for my lack posts in the last couple of months, but we had a big event happen - we have moved!  A job was offered to my husband across country and after trying to say no, we couldn't resist!  Everything fell into place for the move, so we made very quick preparations to move across the country.  

Aside from a little bump in the road on the way to our new home (we blew the engine in our truck), we are happy to report we have made it and are starting to settle in. By settle in, I mean that we have gotten back to school, bread is being made and I have meals frozen in the freezer.  On the other hand, I have piles of boxes in every room of the house that seem to never get unpacked!  

Well, my first goal this past weekend was to get all the boxes out of the living room and pictures up on the wall.  I wasn't totally successful on both fronts (there are still some boxes), but I did get a gallery wall up in my living room!  I am so excited about it too!  I've wanted to do a gallery wall for about a year now, but didn't know where to start.  Moving helped, as I was able to bring all my pictures and knick-knacks together in one place and decide what to do.

 I am trying to move my style over to more of a junk style, but I struggle with it looking cluttered, too.  This  is really my first attempt at using some of my favorite junk to start my wall.  I decided to choose the things I really loved first and then added to it to make it fit together.  I used The Nester's awesome living room wall as inspiration.  I also tried to go on Pinterest for other gallery wall ideas, but decided that I just plain love The Nester's wall! (On a side not, I need those tan and white striped curtains, too!)

 The pieces that I started with are the big "&" sign that my friends gave to me as a going away gift - thank you Rachel & Stacy, the type set drawer on the right, the whit screen and the Airstream picture on the lower right corner.  I hadn't planned on putting any photo pictures up there, because I have heard that you shouldn't have photos in your living room, but I ended up putting pictures that I really love and have a lot of meaning.

So to give you the whole story behind everything, the pictures on the top and middle left are my Great Grandfather as a semi-pro baseball player.  The bottom left picture is my Grandparents' wedding photo.  My favorite "&" sign and below that, my kids.  I used an empty frame to make a picture of Mr. Right and my honeymoon picture.  Below that is a wooden white "S" for our last name and an antique mirror that I was going to paint, but just can't bring myself to do that yet.  Then to the right of those are my white screen with a lathe star that we made (and I will be selling on my Etsy shop soon - that is as soon as I get the boxes unpacked enough to list them! lol).  On top of that are three aluminum plates that Grandfather made.  My typeset drawer which I got at a rummage sale for only $2 is on the top right, with a few small antique pots and pans for a doll stove that my Grandmother had.  The bottom right picture is our first trip with our 1953 Clipper Airstream several years ago.

I also got this little corner of the living room  set up.  That bookshelf in the corner has all of our albums that I have made.  I used my "crate" window and replaced the kids pictures with maps of the state we moved from and the state we moved to.  I have sort of a map theme here, I have the globe in the corner and a glass globe bowl on the shelf too.

I hope I didn't bore you with all of the details, but thought you'd like to see what I've been up to in the last few months.  It may take a little bit to get extremely regular in my posts again, but please bear with me.  I'm also considering a name change and a new Etsy shop name, too - so stay tuned for more exciting changes coming soon!

Don't forget to stop into those blogs that I love to link up to over in the right column.  As always, I love to hear your comments!