How to Create A Gallery Wall of Love
A gallery wall of what?! Of love. Adding the love to the title of this post was a must because it is so much more than info on how to create a gallery wall. In this post, you will learn the reason behind it, how it came to be, and how it benefits our family on a regular basis.
“You Have a Lot of Words”
But first a little story. A couple of years ago, my daughter was being picked up for a date. This young man walked into our home for the first time and after introductions and small talk as we stood in our entryway I noticed him looking around. When Maggie came down, he said hello and then I heard him say the following words, “You have a lot of “words” in your house”.
I about laughed out loud. He was not wrong. We did! Honestly I had never thought about it that way, but he was absolutely right. A little part of me smiled and thought to myself, I’m so glad he noticed. I’ll come back to that later on in this post.
Sooooo what in the world is a gallery wall of love, right? Making my home warm and inviting for family and friends is something I love to do and do with intention. Having a home where my family experiences the warm and cozy feelings of home and making it a place they love to be is extremely important to me.
My Why for Creating the Gallery Wall of Love
Why is this so important? Family is everything to me. I love my family and our most important goals as parents were for our children to love God, love us, and love each other. But not only that we wanted them to enjoy spending time together. HOME is where that happens.
Making our home a place where our children have beautiful memories and warm fuzzy feelings mattered to me. We wanted them to experience this to the fullest while growing up in our home. It was vital that home was their safe place, their sanctuary, and a place they wanted to bring friends to. It was also a place that, down the road as adults, they would love coming home to.
Now that we are in that phase of life I am so grateful we are seeing it come to fruition. I want that for your family too. The family is the foundation of our society. I want so badly to see families strengthened and built upon a good foundation.
This leads me to how making home and a gallery wall go together. A few years ago we had our hardwood floors refinished and in so doing we decided to repaint all the rooms on our first floor. We now had clean fresh walls and new floors giving us a blank slate to work with. When the time came to put our first floor back together, shopping my own collection of home decor was so fun. My treasures had become like new again!
How Our Gallery Wall of Love Came Together
Hmmm….where would I put everything? An idea started to take root and before I knew the gallery wall of love was imagined and set into motion.
I challenged myself to only use the home decor I currently owned. I mean why not? I have a collection of home decor and probably had more than enough to create this gallery wall of love.
The challenge was to complete the gallery wall without spending money. We had just refinished the floors which was a fairly big expense and I wanted to be mindful of the budget. This wall was located in the dining room. As you enter our front door, to the right you are greeted by the dining room. The idea of creating a wall with some of my favorite finds and sentimental family pieces got me excited!
When family and friends walked in the front door to our home this would be the wall they saw. Also, when we descend down our steps and turn the corner, this wall, in all its glory, greets us every day.
How to Create a Gallery Wall of Love
Let the Fun Begin
I laid out all of my decor and began choosing what pieces I wanted. My first piece was a clock (because I have a strange love for all clocks) and it had to be the center of this wall.
What to use to create a Gallery Wall of Love
My next pieces to place were window frames. I also have this thing for old window frames. I look for them all the time. I’m particular with the ones I choose. It has to have the right look and patina and age. Consequently, I had four or five to choose from because like I said I love them and have them all over my house. I chose to add two to this gallery wall.
And then from there my favorite sayings, bible verses, a “G” for our last name, a picture of our family, and our name spelled out in pictures (a gift from our oldest son and daughter-in-love). I now had all the pieces I needed. That being said, the most difficult part remained…arranging them on the wall in the most perfect way. Perfect in that they were perfectly imperfect on the wall.
Enlisting Help for our Gallery Wall of Love
I am a visual designer. In other words, I have to see it, move it, move it back, tweak, tweak, tweak, before I permanently attach. So I called on the help of the three other people in my house at the time. They held up pieces while I visualized and pondered, pondered and visualized…lol. “Slightly right, no slightly left, up a little, down a little”. I only wish I would have been videoing the whole process. It was pretty funny.
“A family that laughs together stays together”
Oh how we would have laughed at that together. I could have used four more hands for sure but we made it work. And with heavy arms and a little complaining, we did it. I can take a while to decide 🧐.
We did it Together!
The best part of this process as I look back, was that we, as a family, completed the wall. It now became my Gallery Wall of Love with all of my favorite things. How fittingly perfect!!
Gallery Wall
There are multiple reasons I loved creating this gallery wall of love. First, it is a gallery of all that is important to me. It included my family, God’s word, vintage finds, time, and words that have meaning.
Second, my family helped me do it and it was truly a family project. Third, it is a reminder every day of what is important to me. And lastly, I spent absolutely no extra money on it. I repurposed and grabbed from everything I already had. Repurpose and reuse is something we do on the regular around here.
Learning to Be Content
I had to learn a long time ago to be content. My hubby and I chose for me to stay home with our children. Because of that decision, 4 kids, and a husband in full time ministry, budgeting was a necessity.
One way I accomplished contentedness was to get creative with what I already had. I redesigned my decor sometimes. Sometimes just giving it a new coat of paint or replacing a bow gave it new life.
Sometimes even just putting it in a different location made it seem new. It was a great way to refresh our home without spending a lot of money. This makes me happy but really makes my hubby happy. These words from Philippians have helped me over the year when discontentment would start to rear it’s ugly head.
This is my desire…to be content in all circumstances. It felt good to be able to use what we had on this special wall. At the same time it felt new and fresh. And bonus, it gave us a place to see every day to remind us of who we are.
What About You?
Do you have places in your home where special words or pictures are displayed? Remember, this will remind your family of who they are and where they come from? And it will do it on a daily basis.
Perhaps you have created a gallery wall of love too? Maybe you didn’t have a name for it and now you do! If you don’t have a gallery wall then maybe this will encourage you to consider creating one.
Subtle reminders around your home can go a long way in the memory bank of your children. Make those deposits daily into your children’s life.
Making Deposits
These verses below in Deuteronomy 11:18 are words I try hard to live by as a mom. These might be worth taking the time to memorize. This passage is one of my favorites in all of scripture. It is a great reminder of what we are commanded to do as moms.
I’ll be honest and tell you my memory isn’t what it used to be. I’m working on my memorizing too. But that being said, I want to encourage you to memorize God’s word as a guide to your motherhood. Encourage your children to memorize Scripture as well.
Storing God’s word in our hearts and the hearts of our children can change their lives.
Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates! Did you hear that? I love how the Bible actually speaks to placing words around your home! Remember that story I told you about in the beginning of this post? This is why I chuckled to myself. You see Maggie’s friend had noticed the “words”! Im not gonna lie though, I do now hesitate to buy signs with words now…apparently I have a lot 🤪
Even more in these verses we hear instruction on speaking God’s word everywhere and all the time. “Teach them to your children when you sit with them at home, as you walk along the road, and as you lie down and you get up” I’m not so sure it was in a gallery wall format in Bible times but, hey, you never know 😘
Creating a Gallery Wall of Love and Our Senses
God certainly wants us to surround our children with his word whether that be through sight or through hearing. How cool is that?!!!
God gave us our senses for a reason and using them for anything that has to do with His Word is definitely one of them. If you are looking for some more insight into our God-given senses subscribe and get notification when my post about senses hits the blog. It will be soon!
So are you ready to create a gallery wall of love or to put verses or words around your home?
Much love,
Kim💗
