Here's the post I promised on how to arrange and hang a gallery wall.  Let me just start off by saying this took me forever to plan and set up, and no time at all to actually hang the frames.  After I already started, I found another way of doing it that might be faster and easier.

First, I used PhotoShop to try different arrangements of frames.  If you do a search on Google, you'll find tons of gallery wall examples.  However, none of these are any help if you already have your frames because your frames are not all the same as their frames.  So, you're kind of on your own.  I made several different arrangements, printed them out and Kevin and I narrowed it down to three.

Then I arranged all the frames on the floor and took pictures of each arrangement so we could compare and make our final decision. 

I printed out our final arrangement, and numbered each rectangle.

Then I used painter's tape to number each frame.

Then came the really long and agonizing part.  It sounds really simple, maybe I just take longer than most to get things done.  I traced each frame onto a brown paper bag and cut it out.  Then I flipped the frame and the paper over, and measured on the frame where the hanging hardware was (where the nail goes), and then measured on the paper, and marked it.  Since my paper was flipped over to the back, I made a little hole with my pen so I could see it from the front.  I also numbered each of the cut-outs as I went so I knew which one went where.

Then I arranged the paper bags on the wall.  This was a bit of a pain, too, because I wanted it to be centered on the room, so there was more measuring involved, and about three different sessions of moving them over just an inch, and then moving them again, etc.  I finally got them all up and as close to centered as they were ever going to be. 

Then came the easy part.  You pound the nails in where the holes are, take the paper off and hang up the frames.  Really.  It actually works.  Every frame but one was exactly where it should have been.  You can see the one on the bottom right is too low because I measured wrong.

First I put them all up over the top of the paper just to see how well they lined up with the paper. 

Then I took them down and took the paper off and put them back up.  They were still a little wonky because frames never really hang straight, so I used a small level and a 3M picture hanging strip on the back of each one to make it hang straight.

Here's a close-up of some of the artwork and frames.  The small colored ones are from the dollar store years ago and hold some postcards I bought in Italy.  I think if the small frames had been the same color as all the others, they might have gotten lost, but since they are colored and grouped together as one, they can hold their own with the larger frames surrounding them.

I had two other smaller prints, one a post card from Germany and the other a watercolor of a bull with a matador we bought in Spain.  I put the postcard in a mat (the matador didn't need a mat) and put them in 5x7 frames, but I bought ones with a very wide frame to make it appear even bigger, to try to even out the difference between those and the 11x14 frames.  I think it worked out well.

So there you have it!  It was a lot of work, but it was worth it in the end.  If you try the other method I linked to up top, I'd like to know how it works out, it seems much easier! 

Today I put the finishing touches on the sitting room, which is the room next to the kitchen that used to be the dining room.  It's pretty small as far as dining rooms go, plus it has a french door that opens in, so that takes up additional space, making it too small for the size of dining table we wanted.  So, we made the next room over the dining room and turned this into a sitting room that Kevin can hang out in while I'm in the kitchen.  It works well when we have guests, too... I can finish up dinner and still be part of the conversation.

To give you a little reminder, this is the wall that used to separate the kitchen from this room. (Sorry about the small picture, I can't find the original right now...

Then we had the flood, and while they were replacing the floor, we went ahead and had the wall taken out. 

Then I had a couple extra days off over New Year's, so I painted.  That was an arduous process.  See, the room has a chair rail, and apparently there was a different sheen of paint above the chair rail than there was below, like one was flat and one was semi-gloss.  I normally use Behr Premium Plus Ultra which is paint and primer in one, so I don't usually prime.  Well, when I started painting, I noticed that the paint was a totally different color above the chair rail than it was below... so I had to prime the whole room, and then it took two additional coats of paint. 

This is what it looks like now from the kitchen... It's so open now, I can't even imagine what it was like anymore with that wall there.  Our next big project is to get an island put in... we already had the electrical run for it when they put the floor down (code requires an island to have outlets.)

The paint color in the sitting room is a custom mix... I started with a Sherwin Williams gray-green color (can't remember the name), but it was too dark so I had Home Depot cut it by 3/4 with white.  The rug is an ivory wool carved rug that I got at World Market.  I love the pattern, it reminds me of the designs carved on the walls of the Alhambra palace we visited in Spain. 

We bought the love seat and chair at Sofa Mart, they were pretty cheap, but they fit the space well and get the job done.  The chair and ottoman are dark green with eggplant colored flowers (eggplant is my new color obsession, but this house is too dark to paint with it so I had to settle for a chair.)  The little ebony table is from Target.  It's a hexagon shape with carved out sides... you're supposed to put a vase or something inside it.  I haven't decided what to put in there yet. 

The stuffed dog is my Bridal Shower Dog, it has a little veil on and all the ladies at my shower signed it.

The basket we're using for the other end table is a HomeGoods find, as is the pretty blown glass flower.  The Love Knots vase is one of our wedding presents (the dried leaves and flowers are left over from a bouquet Angie bought me at Christmas.)  Balsam and Cedar Yankee candle... mmm.

And finally, the gallery wall.  Another one of my projects that took me forever, but it looks so good now that it's done, I just can't take my eyes off it!  It has all of the watercolor prints that I/we bought in Europe.  The smaller ones are actually postcards in dollar store frames.  All of the other frames are different styles, but the same general color wood.  More on how I arranged them and got them all straight in another post.   

Now all I have left for this room is to make some decorative pillow covers... I have the fabric already, just need to take the time to sit down and do it!

I didn't even know such things existed until very recently... did you know you can buy battery operated candles at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, all over the internet and even at the dollar store?  (The latter possibly seasonal around Christmas.) 

I guess some people might wonder why you would want to do that, but to me, it's a match made in heaven.  I like the way candles look and smell, but I simply won't light them.  (The exception being the Balsam and Cedar candle that my mom gave me for Christmas that is smelling soooo good right now.)  I don't know why, but I'm not a light the candles every night person, just like I'm not an opening and closing of the drapes person.  Anyway, these battery-operated candles are awesome because they have timers that allow them to turn on and off automatically.

The ones at the dollar store are made of plastic, not the prettiest or most authentic looking, but if you are going to put it inside a candle holder, then you might not care.  Hobby Lobby and Michaels have some that are made of real wax and they are scented, but don't give off nearly as much scent as a candle like Yankee.

The ones I got for Christmas here (thanks Ang!) are from Flamelesscandles.net, are made from real wax with drips down the side, and are unscented.  They have a dual mode timer, 4 hours or 8 hours.  Basically, you turn them on at the time of day you want them to come on, and they stay on for 4 hours or 8 hours and then shut off automatically.  Then they come on at the same time of day every day (until the battery runs out.)  I can't remember how long it said the battery would last, but it seemed like quite a while if you are only running it 4 hours a day.

First I tried them on the mantle, and it wasn't really doing anything for me, so then I put them in front of the fireplace, behind the fireplace screen (another Christmas present).  I really like how they look there, and having "fire" in the fireplace is nice since we are also not ones to build a fire very often. 

The fireplace screen camouflages the chain metal curtain on the fireplace that's all gross and bent and dirty.  Kevin bought it for me for Christmas after I not-so-subtly sent him a link to the Walmart page and said "This is what I want for Christmas."  The candle holders are from Goodwill, and are in the early stages of being spray painted.  I put one coat of primer on them... I still need to spray another coat of primer and then spray paint them whatever color they're going to be.  Or maybe I'll just leave them they way they are since they're behind the screen and you can't really see them very well anyway :-)

In other news, I painted the sitting room this weekend, which is the room next to the kitchen that we opened up by taking the wall down.  I am still trying to get the wall art up and then I will take a picture.  It might be a while since I have to order some special sized frames on the internet.  But it's looking great and so much better than the dirty white paint that was in there before.  So much to do, so little time!