iPhoto

I had the unique opportunity today to spend an extended period of uninterrupted time with iPhoto.  I've been trying desperately to get this gallery wall up in my stairway for months now.  

I've been procrastinating though, because it's such a HUGE thing to do.  And I might be kind of a perfectionist, which means that sometimes I'm so afraid of messing stuff up that I put it off and just don't do it at all.  

This morning, since the Scout Master has been out of town all week, he asked me what I wanted to do, and after thinking about the Saturday of my dreams...I read a book until 12 and then asked for help with this wall.  The Scout Master is a  planning/list making kind of a guy, so we now have a plan and a list, which is apparently what I needed.  Awhile ago, I spray painted all of our picture frames black.  Today we laid them all out to see what sizes we have and what we needed to fill in with.  We have a lot of BIG frames and a lot of little frames, but not enough medium sized ones.  After that we designated the exact shape of the space where all those frames would go.  And then we came upstairs and turned on the MAC to try to figure out what we were going to put in those frames.  And then here's the fun part...

Because I have spent big chunks of my time in the last few weeks sorting all of our pictures into this iThing, I was able to go through all of them today and pick out the very best ones (it took all day...that's 42 years of pictures!!)  I mostly picked pictures of the kids, but there are some cute ones of my parents and of the Scout Master and I when we were little.  After I picked them, I used the edit feature on my MAC and cropped them, edited them, enhanced them and made them all black and white!  That was the coolest thing EVER!  Here's what a few of them look like...(ok there are a LOT of them...but not nearly as many as there will be on that wall...and it's way too hard for me to narrow anything.  So, here's a bunch in case you don't get to come walk up my stairs anytime soon...)

I totally LOVED spending the whole day looking at pictures of my family.  I love every one of these people so much.  I am so abundantly blessed to be related to all these great people.  I felt completely overwhelmed all day with gratitude for my life and my children and my husband and the things we've been able to do in the 25 years we've been together.  What a great way to spend a day.