i heart my gallery shelf

Hello sweet readers. If you're reading this, you deserve a great big cyber-hug, just for checking in! Things have been a little crazy in my house these days. My days consist mostly of holding (and feeding) the baby, while trying to keep my other two kids alive, fed, and moderately happy. There has been little-to-no housework getting done, and certainly no blogging. However, my little boy let me put him down for a while yesterday...ah, the FREEDOM! With my newfound freedom, what do you think I did? Unearth my kitchen counters from clutter? Clean my embarrassingly neglected bedroom? Fold the enormous piles of laundry?

Oh no.

Friend, I did what any self-respecting interior redesigner in my position would do.

I re-decorated.

Ah, the freedom and beauty of those words! Granted, I was running around like a mad woman, muttering "Please don't wake up! Please don't wake up!" the entire time, so someone watching may not have realized I was actually engaging in a relaxing ritual. But oh, the sanity those moments brought me. They were priceless! I spend so much time in one chair in my living room these days - with aforementioned babe - that it's really important for my view from that chair be as serene as possible.

It was nothing drastic - mostly relocating some clutter and re-accessorizing a large shelf and the top of the piano (and, okay, so I dusted a bit too - but that's hardly worth mentioning, 'cause it's not fun) - but it made me feel better. I didn't bother to take a "before" pic because I wasn't even thinking of the blog at the time, so above is an old photo of the shelf from last summer.

And here was the shelf at Christmas time...

And here it is now. And I can't guarantee it will stay this way for long. The biggest change is in how I think about this shelf now. Before, it was just a shelf, and the arrangement of it was really quite static (for me, anyway). It was mainly there to try to make the TV not stick out like a sore thumb.

Now, however, I've decided to make it my gallery shelf. In other words, the display will be constantly rotating...my favorite pics of the kids and my favorite pieces of artwork at a given time. The great thing about just leaning the frames against the wall is that I can change the look on a whim - as opposed to some of my gallery-type arrangements hanging on the wall, where there are a million nails in the wall (therefore a million holes) and I don't want to move the frames for fear of exposing all the holes underneath. It's not quite as minimal of a look as I had before, but I think I'm ready to step it up a bit and display lots of framed things that are beautiful to me (as well as either interesting or sentimental).

I'm laughing because I 've already re-arranged the shelf just since taking this picture (ten minutes ago). Sigh. I love my "new" gallery shelf.