Does part of your house just stare at you, or am I a crazy person?

The wall above the desk in our living room was bare for m.o.n.t.h.s. after we moved in. Just staring at me. And I spent a lot of time staring right back trying to figure out what belonged in the big, gaping empty staring space. (Gallery? Giant mirror? Set of shelves with knick-knacks and photos? Photos? One Shelf? Two shelves? Nothing. Nothing belongs in that stupid space.)

I definitely wanted: a way to display more photos of the sweet people we cherish.

I definitely lacked: funds. I always get caught in the balance between holding the reigns on my debit card while not wanting to make a project look cheap and crappy. I would have thrown a few giant shelves up and covered them with funky frames and smiling faces, but we’re talking dough.

So I found another way.

My biggest pulls of inspiration were this post and this post from ABM. I basically combined some the concepts, reached out to my sister-in-law (the one and only Alex Karber Photography) who had a stellar printing recommendation that shifted the way I did everything, and went to town.

Originally I was searching for someone to print quality square photographs inexpensively so I could lay them out side by side and fill a frame with the tiled photos. Then Alex showed me THE COOLEST COMPANY who made exactly what I pictured in my brain, in poster form, super inexpensively. Immediately I knew this meant a) perfectly straight lines b) virtually zero time c) cheeeeap.

Now, it is my honest-to-goodness sincere hope that every single girl gets to look back on her wedding day with bliss and bias and think I seriously had the most stellar, fun, loving wedding reception ever. Speaking through a cloud of bridal bias: 1/2 wedding celebration, 1/2 New Year’s Eve bash, our reception was the party of my life. So many of our sweet friends and family were able to come laugh, eat cake, drink from “not the kids table,” and dance our legs sore for hours.

These aren’t the type of shots normally chosen to sit sweetly in expensive frames adorning mantel tops…which made them perfect for my project.

Everyone looks just a hair ridiculous, but intensely full of happiness -just the very best kind of frozen moments.

The most difficult part was combing through hundreds of shots and narrowing down the top 96 that painted the best picture of the entire evening. After making our selections, I took them into my photo editing software to square crop and make them all match in color. (Which wasn’t necessary for such a user-friendly website, but hi I’m Robin the control freak psychoperfectionist.)

A little out of the ordinary, it serves as both a piece of art + a sweet reminder of so many of the loved ones in our lives.

Rounding out the space with a couple more pieces that also mean a lil somethin’ special to me, I couldn’t be more pleased with the result. And thrilled because however much TSwift digs her blank spaces, they just ain’t my thang.