A record of Anniversary Photo Tradition

Deck progress drags on, so we will be back with more details for you on Monday (wish we had more full days to devote to it, but it’ll likely be a weekly update situation like our first house’s bathroom reno and our kitchen redo since it is such a big undertaking). But I simply could not resist sharing this in-progress picture of John and his dad telling the auger who is boss:

Oh but the time it is taking us to build this deck is not what I meant by the title of “half a decade” (at least we hope it will not take us five years to get ‘er done). That has to do with our five year wedding anniversary, which is coming up on July 7th. How crazy is that? We cannot even grasp that it has been half of a decade since our little backyard wedding. And it means that seven years ago we shared our first kiss (we picked 7/7/07 as our wedding day because 7/7/05 was when we began dating – yes we kissed on the first date, haha).

There are some parts of our wedding that we remember so vividly it easily could have been a month ago. So funny how time flies. And as some of you know, it has been a little tradition to take a picture of our family on July 7th in honor of our wedding day, like this:

This was last year’s picture, with simply one wiggly kid…

… and with both of them…

We like to frame each year’s picture in small differently shaped capiz frames that we have found over time (from Target, thrift stores, Hobby Lobby, etc). But our sink was getting cluttered with four full frames and the latest empty one that we snagged from Target a few weeks back in anticipation of our fifth photo. So we chose to tackle a little photo-hanging project to get them off the sink and enjoy them in a pleasant little grouping on the wall next to it.

For some reason hanging frames seems to be something we get asked about the most, so we thought we’d break down the process for getting these folks on the wall without any oops holes. Either folks are simply plain intimidated to hammer a nail into a pristine hole-less wall or they are not sure how to settle on “the right” arrangement. The good news is there are likely consistently at least ten arrangements that would look good, so we simply like to put the frames on the floor and play around until we have a little grouping that we like. Like this:

The next step is to make little paper templates for each frame, so you can map out where you want to place them (and only make one hole in the correct spot for each frame instead of ten bad ones). We simply laid the frame on top of white printer paper, traced the outline, cut them out, and taped them to the wall, shifting things around until we liked what we saw:

We had also taken a second to mark where the nail hole needed to be on each one by holding it up against the back of the frame before taping it up and pushing a nail through to rest on the hook on the back of the frame. So when we taped them up they already had these nail guide holes to fully take the guesswork out of things.

Some of our frames did not come with hooks for hanging them on the wall (since they are meant to be tabletop frames) so we simply picked up a pack of picture hanging hardware at JoAnn for 99 cents (for four of them). Then I crazy glued them to the back of the frame and pulled off the little flap that you use to stand them on the counter (since the flap would make them sit away from the wall more than we hoped them to).

Next we simply hammered through the pre-made hole in the paper template where we knew the nail should go for each one.

Which looked a little something like this:

Then we left the nails in the wall and pulled the paper templates off. Less then a minute later we had everything hanging. And then I ran outside to grab some flowers, because I am girly like that.

It is sweet to see four anniversary photos all together on the wall, with that blank fifth one simply waiting for our latest family pic in a few weeks.

Think Clara and Burger are going to cooperate this year? Nah, me either. But that is half the lively.

Oh and we thought this could also double as a budget blooms post since we are woefully overdue for one of those. See all these flowers I mentioned running outside for? Yup, they are all free from the yard! They are clippings from the hydrangea bushes out by the patio, and a giant man-eating (not truly, but it is large) butterfly bush in the back yard.

I simply stuck a little glass vase full of water in the middle of this giant ceramic planter (from HomeGoods a while back) on top of a cardboard box to lift it up so the stems of everything did not have to be impossibly long.

I enjoy the little pointy butterfly bush clippings mixed in with the lace-like balls o’ hydrangea. I wonder if they’ll live long sufficient to see us put our next picture in the empty five-year-anniversary frame?

Likely not, but they sure are fairly for now.

I especially enjoy how you can appreciate all the distinct types of capiz frames since they are not all jumbled in front of each other on the counter anymore.

And come to think of it, hydrangeas are fairly fitting for that vase beneath them since they were in my little homemade wedding bouquet.

Oh my gosh, was that truly five years ago? I am in denial. Haha. Anyone else have any anniversary traditions or frame groupings you’ve been hanging up? Do you use paper templates to simplify things? Or do you have another straightforward hanging method? Share and share alike!

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner, so click here to see if it is you.