Our legacy gallery wall is complete, and we are absolutely smitten with it!! A couple years ago, I had an idea for what I call our legacy gallery wall: photographs of everyone on both sides of our families from across the generations. Those that came before us and those that have come after us. The ones who have built our family legacy, the ones who will carry it on, the ones who have loved and encouraged us, all of our grandparents who have been married 60+ years, and our parents who have been married 40+ years. Combinations of photos with our grandparents, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Photos from wedding days and milestone celebrations and family vacations and house buying and everyday life. Images that tell our family stories.

I wanted to use this huge blank wall by our staircase to highlight our family legacy and celebrate these incredible and loving people, and the result is the sweetest gift! It’s one of the first things you see when you walk in the front door, and you can see the legacy gallery wall from many spots around the house; it’s nice and central. It makes us smile every time we walk up and down the stairs or glimpse it from another room! I can’t imagine anything more special or memorable here.

The hardest part was narrowing down photos, and I chose to do them all in black and white so the finished result wouldn’t be too busy or bold. I tried so hard to include everyone on all four sides of our families while also being sure we didn’t have the world’s most massive display of photographs. There’s no surprise that I went with white, gold, and dusty French blue frames for the photos (a mix and match of sizes and photo orientation). After spending a few hours in early January selecting photos, having them printed, and putting them in frames, the frames just sat in our entryway for five months – ha! There’s nothing quite like your in-laws arriving in an hour or two to light a fire to actually hang them!! I timed the actual hanging of our gallery wall, and it took me 29 minutes to hang the entire thing… what was I waiting for?! So voilà! Our extremely meaningful and very special legacy gallery wall is complete! What a marvelous treasure this is.