Our family Tree . . . wall!

So I was lying in bed a couple weeks ago trying to decide what to do with the hallway. We had just painted it (we paint a lot) and, in our neverending effort to gain more space in our not to terribly huge house, we hung a really cool shelf thing on one wall to hold all our herbs that we pick and dry.  I had a dry erase board for the kids on the other wall, on the bottom half, but I wanted to do family pictures above that.  

So while lying in bed this picture popped into my head of a tree with branches entertwining around family pictures.  This is what I came up with.

It was really very easy.  I taped some paper to the wall where I thought I may like pictures.  Then I took some chalk and outlined a tree.  Then I got some black wall paint (yes, we have some black walls in the house too) and I just kind of freehanded the tree using the chalk outline as a guide.  It didn't take long at all.  Maybe a couple hours.  Of the whole project though taking the pictures, printing them out and getting them in frames (some of which I had to spray black too) was by far the hardest and most time consuming part.

My Paper "pictures" and chalk outline

I put a picture of Charlie and I at the top.  Around that I put pictures of us holding each of the kids as babies, then on the bottom I did recent a picture of each kid, that I can switch out as they grow.  If I had more room (or used smaller pictures) I would have loved to do pregnancy pictures too.  I'll have to reassess the layout if (Lord willing when) we have more kids! 

A view from the other side (yes, that is Piper holding a chicken, Lele)

 I could have made the tree trunk go down lower, but my original intent was to have a bunch of roots down there spreading out across the wall.  Then after I painted it on I thought roots (and more branches, which I had also intended to do) may be too 'busy'.

This is a view down the hall (dry erase board on the bottom left, herb storage right)

This is our cool dry herb storage!  We haven't put all the herbs in there yet but it holds our recycled jars nicely!