I've waited my whole life for this.

Let's be honest. I've waited my whole life to have a house to decorate. I never spent hours dreaming about wedding or the man I'd marry. No. I wanted a house. I drew so many floor plans. Now I have one for a month and I really haven't gotten around to much decorating other than paint.

Today was the day. I decided to work on my picture wall. I've been collecting frames here and there for a while now. Nothing too special... just black. Most people seem to be going with white, same-sized frames lately. I chose black because a lot of our furniture is blackish and we have light walls and wainscoting to begin with. So, most of the frames I already had were good to go. I had on frame that Jeremy gave me with a rainbow (that he drew--obviously, considering the order of the colors) that was more of a pine color so I fixed that with a little spraypaint.

Black undercoat, satin finish.

Laura, why'd you buy all that spraypaint? Good question. I didn't. When my parents moved to Colorado they couldn't take the flammable containers with them. Hence, spraypaint.

Alright. Now fixing up the wall.

Here's the blank wall I started with.

First I laid the picture frames out on the floor in a pattern that I liked. I wasn't too concerned with having perfect, measured spacing between the frames because the frames are all different anyways. I wanted a more eclectic look--mostly because I'm lazy and it's much less work.

Then I cut out pieces of newspaper to the size of the frame and poked a hole where the "hanger" for the picture was on the back of the frame.

Then I taped my pattern up on the wall and nailed the nails into the hanger marks.

Then I ripped down the pieces of paper, hung up the pictures and voila! Worked perfectly for me. I didn't make a single "extra" hole in the wall. Whole project took me an hour and a half.

Pinwheel from our wedding! The background is some neat, handmade paper that Megan got me for Christmas. I've been waiting for the perfect occasion to use it :-)