Parlor love!

When we moved into our new base house Noah claimed the front room as "The Parlor".  We are big "southerners" at heart and so since this is the first room that you enter he dubbed it the parlor. 

I knew right away that I wanted this to be our Family Home Evening room. I wanted it to be warm and inviting and I wanted it to be a place where anyone could come and be "alone" (if that's possible in a family of 6). 

I also knew that since we can't paint or wallpaper any of the walls in the house that I had to get creative on ways to make the space more inviting.

I put all of our books in here and our pull out couch so that guests could have a space for themselves when they come to visit. 

Something I LOVE about our new house is that we have lots of blank walls and great spaces for "creating". 

I stalked pinterest and pinned a ton of different  ideas for how to decorate our walls.

Here are some examples of my favorites.

projectphxhome

thehouseofsmiths

 I decided a few things that I wanted this wall to be:

* all black frames 

*square and rectangle sizes

*I wanted a combo of things I loved

*I wanted it to reflect parts of our religious beliefs 

(because this was going to be the family home evening room after all)

*I didn't want to have to spend very much money and really wanted to use my existing stuff.

I "shopped" my house and found all the things I wanted to go on this wall. 

I started by measuring the wall and then I mapped out the distance on my floor, so I knew how much area I had to work with. 

I then took all the frames and started laying them out on the floor, it took me awhile to find the place for everything I wanted. I have a couple of vinyl quotes that I have ordered,  (but that are not here yet) so I also had to configure them into the mix. 

I then took pictures so that I would know where they all went once I actually started hanging them up. 

 I then started hanging the pictures. I wish I could say I measured them and all that fun stuff, but I didn't. I had 3 little boys hanging on my every move and wanting to "help" me so I got all of the pictures up as fast as I could.

Once I started hanging the pictures I did a little bit of reconfiguration so that it flowed the way I wanted it too.

 I still need to change out some of the actual pictures and add in the vinyl (our family name will be diagonal in the top left corner. And there will be a long quote under the elephant picture.)

We have our "Living Christ" frame, the first presidency of our church and a painting of the sacred grove (go here to find out more about those), our FHE board, family pictures, and quotes I love.

I love this room. It's not very big and I think that for the space we had to work with its really well done. I usually go into this room to talk on the phone and be in "semi quietness" for a little while.

I am also in the process of shopping for an arm chair for this room and it will go in front of the book shelf. 

I have a whole hallway project to start planning now. 

I also finally finished the family room walls and I will share those with you soon.