Gallery walls and craigslist

I must be the queen of procrastination. Or have Project ADD. Or something.
I decided a couple years ago that I'd love a gallery wall in our house. I collected frames and artwork and piled them on top of the sitting room shelf. And I left them there.  For a long, long time.  I don't know what to blame. My creative mind coming up with more projects before I finish the ones I've started?

Anyhow, I love spray paint.
It helped me transform my many miscellaneous and mismatched picture frames to one unifying color.

I also love craigslist.
It helped me transform my sitting area off the dining room.
Actually, I can thank Craig and his list for much more than my sitting area.  Most of our living room furniture, bookshelves, dining room furniture, and appliances were bought used off of craigslist.  Call us cheap if you'd like, but I prefer to think of myself as practical and unfussy.
As a result of our cheap unfussy furniture, I have no guilt about changing up things (not that I do it often anyway).  I hardly ever lose more than a few bucks since I just resell items on craigslist.

This "sitting area" of ours has seen a lot of changes and different pieces of furniture.  When we moved in, it held a monstrous rock wall and shelf. We tore that out and for a long time we had an unfinished, waiting for texture, sheetrocked wall. We also had an unsightly diagonal chimney pipe running out of the stove for longer than I care to admit.  Eventually, I rolled some paint on the walls, Dean straightened the pipe, and I put a big shelving unit and one chair in this space.
It wasn't really working for our family of seven, as we hang out in this area more often than the living room.

So when I found a like-new sofa listed, I jumped on it.
I couldn't be happier with the new look, and I wonder why I waited so long to make this space work better for us.

I don't think I'd trade my family art wall for any Da Vinci or Picasso piece.  As beautiful as the professional paintings are, they don't mean half as much to me as our own art.
Besides, I have my own little budding artists.
Check out my son's version of Starry Night and another's summer-vacation-inspired painting of himself biking across the Golden Gate Bridge.

This gallery wall stuff is kind of addicting! And the kids love that their work is up in frames.
I've still got some spray paint left...Now, I'm sure I have some more frames lying around here somewhere...