Wednesday, September 26, 2012

let there be photos, lots of photos

i'm so tired of bare walls! with our house on the market, i'd really done a lot of packing up and de-personalizing our house so buyers could "picture themselves living" in our house. well, now that we can picture ourselves living in our house for a few more years, i'm very excited to get to personalize our space again!

i've had issues with what i wanted to do for the staircase wall every since we moved in back in 2007. i had continuous searched for inspiration and ideas and finally, i found this courtesy of Pinterest....


this inspiration comes from the cutest blog, forevercottage--check it out here. i love the personal aspect of this gallery. photographs mixed with memorabilia and family touches. so, i took this to heart and started digging my packed away personal items. i gathered and hunted for about 2 weeks. i repainted frames, bought a few new ones and distressed some old one's. i found some of our wedding photos i'd never hung, one honeymoon room door key from the tutweiler personalized with our names and wedding day, a old photograph of my grandparents and lots of other great items. here is where my gallery wall is right now....


i love the lab bust on the wall instead of picture of our lab--although, when i find a good one it's going in a frame to be added too! i still have some room to add more items as i continue to unpack all the personal stuff in the attic. for now, i'm most happy with where the gallery is and i'm working on  few more. glad to have my house back! Pin It

Monday, September 24, 2012

Back to School, Blogging, and a Contest....

There has been a LOT going on in the Carle house. We have taken our house off the market, done some personalized decorating and DIY projects, have made some new friends, lost a friend unexpectedly, acquired a cat & decided to keep the cat, have a Kindergartner in our midst, and many, many other things I want to share with you. I'm going to try to do better at posting consistantly--I really have missed it!

On that note, I wanted to share our First Day of School photograph which won us a $100 gift card to PearTreeGreetings.com, one of my favorite sites. This is a photo collage I did of Jackson's First day of Kindergarten using InstaCollage....

How cute is he?!?! He is attending Southminster Day School in Vestavia and it has been AWESOME! His teacher is Mrs. Crowson and he has 15 classmates. The monkey was a gift from his teacher on "meet the teacher" night that is his friend to ease him into his new room and school. He really does love it and I LOVE having him ride with me everyday.

I'm super excited that we won the contest--I was very surprised when I got the e-mail. They are announcing all the winners soon and I'll be sure to post on the announcemen so you can see all the other cute Back-to-School pictures. Pin It