Family Photo Collage

I'm happy to say that I finally had family photos taken and have another "to do" checked off my "home improvement list". This may not sound like a big deal to you. I mean most people that have been married for 12 years and have had children for 7 years have done family photos yearly! Well...I must admit, again I'm a slacker and this is the first time in our 12 years of marriage that we really have a "family photo." There is a reason for this, I call it "post traumatic photo syndrome!" (Caused from my first photo taking experience with my children.) My oldest was two and my middle child was 2 weeks old. I thought I would take them down to Kiddie Kandids for a new picture. Yeah...bad idea! It was literally one of the worst parent experiences of my life! My oldest was not yet adjusted to the idea of her little sister being in existence. To say the least she hated her guts and wanted her dead! (Please don't think bad of my oldest child, life's hard enough for a 2 year old and then Mom and Dad throw in a cute little sister that steals all the attention!) I hate to admit it, but I'm the oldest of my siblings and my mom said I was the same way. If I knew the name of the sweet visiting teacher that I bit when she came to visit my mom and my new baby sister, I would say sorry!) My daughters have since learned to love each other very much (and I love my sister too!) But during this photo shoot trying to capture the sweetness of my daughters I got my 2 year old throwing toys at the baby, she wouldn't hold her or even sit by her! The baby screamed the entire time and when we got through, let's just say I was scarred for life (or the next 7 years, LOL!) Since that experience of great joy (insert sarcasm) I have had another child and of course love him more than life itself (not being sarcastic) and thought again that it was time to get over my post traumatic photo syndrome and get a family photo taken! This experience went much better and so I thought I would share the end result with you. As I mentioned in a previous post, my home is not decorated the way I would like it to be yet, always a work in progress. But I did get one bare wall decorated! Yay me!! (There's still so much to do.) Here's what I did: Bought a decorative rod at Rod Works, handy hubby hung it on the bare wall (since I can't hang things straight!), bought some wooden letters that spelled out FAMILY, my girls really love crafting so I let them paint them, they did a great job! (The whole time, my oldest kept saying, this is just like Art Class!) Then when the paint was dried we glued on letters we had cut out of scrapbook paper using Modge Podge, Then hung the letters using ribbon. I found a picture collage arrangement on Pinterest that I liked and wha-la..no more naked wall!