My son is 7, so we have 7 year's worth of large framed portraits, and we are quickly running out of room. What's your MO as to what to hang and where?
I used to have a theory to just have our wedding portrait and his baby 1st year portraits in our bedroom, and then all family photos in the hallway and staircase, but that is being blown out of the water by additional school and sports pictures I never anticipated when he started school.
What to do, what to do...
Pick and choose. You can't put them all up. It becomes nuts. Pick the special one, like first birthday etc never framed sports photos.
We usually just display the current year, with the older ones behind it in the frame. Then when you take the frame down, it's like a little time capsule.
Typically, we stick the new one in front of the old/last one in the same frame.
We had every year's photo on the wall when I was growing up... and I didn't care for it. And it was embarrassing when friends came over... all those cheesy elementary pictures, lol.
So, we just have the most current ones... and a handful of pics from when they were reeeeeally small (before school age). They are on the main wall in our family room.
We also have a nice set of professional portraits done for my birthday the year I turned 40, of the kids. One of each individually, and one of them together (total of 3 pics). Framed nicely, they hang in a hallway area. These are nice portraits, not school or sports pictures.
I have a picture frame that is matted & change out there picture every year.
I put them in the hallway leading upstairs.
So each year I update the frames w/the "new" photo.
Then I have little frames throughout the family room, piano room & living room w/the wallet size photos so I can have more of them.
I have one coffee table photo album so all visitors (family & friends) can
see all the photos.
Then keep the rest in photo boxes.
do you have the spring and the fall pictures for every year up? I'd pick one for each year. I change them out . I don't keep up every year I have the current year and then ones that I especially like. With two kids I don't have the room to keep them all so I don't put sports team pictures aren't up. One dance picture is up, it's them together. Any sports pictures we have are put in their rooms.
We hang the following portraits in the hallway:
- Wedding
- Baby's 1st (for both)
- Most current (for both)
Everything else is put into an album and on the shelf.
We only display the most current portrait. Each year, we swap out the old for the new in the same frame, then the old goes into photo storage. Group photos get displayed only while still a current-event. If the photo was taken at the end of the activity, it doesn't go on the wall at all.
Most of our portraits are in the livingroom and dining room (they are open to each other). I have an 8x10 frame for DD where there's a pocket in the back. I put the older photos in the back and have just the most current one up front. I get one done every year for her birthday. The sks have their HS graduation photos and some other random school photos and we have portraits of other key family members and our wedding photo. Most of our displayed photos are actually candid shots in collage frames.
First off, not everything has to be framed, and not every framed picture must be displayed all the time.
We have 3 kids, and I don't frame pictures very often, but our favorite framed pictures of the kids are in the living room, dining room, foyer, and above each kid's bed.
School and sports pictures I wouldn't frame. My parents just kept them around until we were old enough to decorate our own bedroom walls. Then we'd just tape them to the walls of our bedroom, or on our bedroom doors.
We had the current year photo in a frame and the others on a photo album. Sports, dance, cheerleading etc were in smaller frames scattered around the house. Fyi. you don't have to buy all those photos from school they are a fundraiser for the school just get the smallest one and stick it in his memory book
I've never displayed them all at once. Usually just the current year, and a few favorites from past years that I am not ready to put away.
I think it's just a matter of personal taste. My SIL has three kids roughly the same age as mine, and her walls are COVERED with framed photographs. I think it looks cluttered and messy and it's hard to appreciate the photos because there are so many. I only have framed photos above the fireplace, on a few tabletops and along the shelves in the hallway. I think less looks better than more!
I have a wall with a joint family one and with each "set" of kids that you see when you walk in.
In the hallway, I have each child's current school picture (previous years are not out). Sports pictures are up in the holder it comes in until the next sports season and then that is put away in their rooms in their box of special papers, projects and photos. In the family room I have some large collage frames that have a variety of professional photos along with snapsnots. I choose pictures to display based on what it captures instead of displaying them all. I want them to stand out instead of being one of the masses.
I bought a photo album with 8X10 sleeves to keep the photos. But we also stopped getting them and buying them. First - the school photos are nearly always awful -and SO much money. So I stopped that. I take photos all the time - at family gathering, any time the kids are dressed nicely, Christmas pictures, family vacations, etc. The really good ones I might get enlarged but only to 5X7 and then they come to my office for my credenza. I don't need pictures of them at home - they're always there eating everything in sight!
I have two of those frames (one for each kid) that have mats in them with cutouts so that you can put one wallet size photo from each year in it and when it's done you have a time-line of their school photos from Kindergarten to Sr. year of HS all in one frame. Mine are about 6" X 12", roughly. There is one cut out that's bigger than the others for the Sr. Portrait. It's nice to see how the kids have changed over the years without taking up a lot of space on our walls. I also have a sofa table that has various family pictures of various family members and on it I have two 5X7 frames (again, one for each kid) and I put their most recent school picture in that. When new school pictures come out I take the old one out and put it in my photo drawer (which some day, I swear, will turn into an album!) and put the current one in the frame. I also never buy 8X10s anymore. 5X7s are much easier to handle.
I made sure to get subsequent photos in the same size as previous ones and just put them in the same frame - virtually updating the photos as they came along. It was easy and I didn't have to try to get new frames or find additional wall space. The pictures even fit in the frame on top of the old photo. When my girls got grown and had homes of their own, I gave them a frame of photos of themselves to do what they wanted with them. I have kept photo albums and treasure them - but they can get bulky and out of control. That seemed to work for all the oversized photos.
Good lord. Glad you didn't have six kids.
One question - Why do you want to hang all the pictures on the walls? Of course you will run out of space :) Imagine how many potraits you will end up with by the time your kids are grown up , get married , have babies. You definitely need to pick and choose what you want to be displayed on the walls.
Bedroom, hallway, staircase are where I hang all the potraits as well.
I have 2 suggestions for you -
1. Buy one of those bigger frames with several slots for pics and make a collage.
2. Make a picture book and leave it on the coffee table , if you want guests to look at all your kids pictures. Just have the cute baby pics or the latest pics (whatever you prefer) on the walls.
