Photo Swappin'

It seems like the theme of this week is change- and how rooms change over time. Something that I try to keep on top of is changing out our photos in our frames. Our family changes, so our photos need to change.

I really focused on our hallway and master bedroom. The hallway has more photos, so it needed the most change! Back before we had children, I had 5 frames with pictures of our dog. Slowly that got narrowed down to 3 (and eventually 2 in the after picture):

As I'm trying to figure out what pictures I want to swap out I grab a post-it pad and start slapping them on the photos that I'm ready to change. This helps me visually see what's going to change and what kind of photo I need to be looking for (vertical or horizontal, 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10). Also I don't trust my brain to go back and remember what I figured out once, so it's just a visual to help me remember. I also write myself a little note of the picture I'm thinking of (plus the post-it stays there until the picture gets changed! Talk about in your face!).

Although sometimes I'm just not sure what picture I want to use:

I've only replaced one picture so far but it sure is one of my favorites (very bottom right)! Yes his collar is popped.

Moving on to the bedroom collage. I talked here about starting this collage and it has slowly been added on to over time... Plus see our wedding card collage? That's a new home for it since we transformed our dining room into an office.

I was never really a fan of the mirror being there. It was always REALLY low (since I used to have a vanity in front of it). Also sitting in bed during a middle of the night feeding I realized that we have 2 "J's" on that wall. No need for that!

After helping Josh move out of his office, there were some mirrors/frames we bought for that space that needed to absorb themselves in our home. One being the round mirror. I moved a couple of the frames/canvases over and fit the new ones in. I LOVE the height this mirror gives.

I was also ready for a change over my dresser. Again, the picture doesn't do it justice, but this canvas was waaaay too low. I swapped out the canvas (see it in the photo above?) and gave the too low mirror (from the original master collage) a coat of white paint. You may remember that the canvas was my 5 year anniversary gift to the hubs. The traditional gift is "wood" so I had our names and wedding date "carved" into a tree (aka I ordered it off Etsy and they photoshopped it in) ;)

The white mirror makes that corner feel airy and the height of the mirror makes the whole space feel bigger. I would love to add a lamp on my grandmother's antique dresser, so I'm keeping my eyes open for that (yes I already tried this one... it was way too big). Also we haven't painted this room since we've been here so I think with dark gray walls or creamy yellow walls this frame will really pop!

I mentioned in my lamp post that I had to move my wedding bouquet from over this lamp because the glass reflected the light bulb and it drove me crazy. We LOVE our puppy and this canvas (which was in Josh's office) needed a place in our home. 

Which left me needing to find a place for my bouquet. I rearranged some things on our floating shelf wall and came up with this:

Here it was before (I know the picture says after- I swiped it from our home tour page). 

You may be wondering where the white "J" from the master collage ended up. It found itself a nice home in our hall bathroom. I still haven't decided what pictures will go in these frames (also from Josh's office), so for now the nice IKEA paper will scream at me until I swap it out :) This was just a big blank wall before these changes.