Spring 2021 ORC Framing Mementos
Week 1 LINK | Week 2 LINK | Week 3 LINK
It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge and today we are talking all about framing mementos for your home. When we were dreaming up our office design, we decided that it was important for the office to feel personal. There are many beautiful office spaces on Instagram and Pinterest that don’t represent the people using said offices. The images likely work well when trying to sell a home, but we aren’t selling our house. We are living in it. And we have hobbies, personalities, friends, and family that are important to us. We want to represent all these things throughout our house. That being said, I am still an aesthetically driven decorator and want all our “stuff” to look nice. So I took extra care in framing mementos and displaying meaningful items in our office in a way that is aesthetically pleasing.
Has anyone else been scarred by the “Live, Laugh, Love” era of decorating? That style gained a lot of popularity right as I was going to college. I was gifted so many frames and decor pieces splashed with word art in the 2010’s. My first few apartments had gallery walls galore intermixed with cheeky framed quotes. It seemed that every house had a wall of black gallery frames. These frames probably even had peel and stick quotes above them. While I appreciate that people were just trying to showcase meaningful memories, the look did not age well. I really want our office to have some keepsakes and photos displayed in a more timeless way. I know the word “timeless” is ambiguous, but to me it means that our keepsakes will look more like decor and less like clutter.
Since this is mainly Colin’s office, I thought it was important that he have photos of friends around. We haven’t added many photos of friends and family around the house yet, but that changes starting now! Colin and his friends were, and still are, heavily into BMX. They even built a ramp in his childhood backyard! Because BMX is so important to his identity, I asked a few of his friends for old pictures to print for the office. Shoutout to Ryan for all the awesome pictures!! We chose 6 photos and bought these frames.
I really like that the frames match the legs we picked for the credenza. (More on the credenza in the coming weeks!) We also went with a square size since the photos are a mix of landscape and portrait. Hot tip for anyone who wants to print an assortment of pictures! To get a more cohesive look, the pictures were printed in Sepia. Black and white is definitely the more popular option, but the warm colors of Sepia fit my design style and personal taste better. Plus it looks great with the wood frame!
Another important keepsake that we want to display are our marathon medals. Such huge accomplishments should be commemorated, but I usually don’t like medal racks or shadow boxes. I came across this on Pinterest and I appreciate that it is very minimalistic. Less showy. Like, I want to remember the accomplishment, and I want people to know we each ran a marathon, but let’s not get in their faces about it.
The last keepsakes to be framed are our diplomas. Pretty standard for an office, but it will make the room feel so professional 😉 What are your thoughts on framing mementos and displaying keepsakes? Am I being too uptight about it? Bad 2010’s home decor trends have definitely influenced my decorating opinions, but I’m working hard to find fresh ways to keep mementos around. Thank you for reading the blog this week and make sure to catch up with all the One Room Challenge participants this season.
