From wall space to wallpaper

When I moved out the first time, I took a small stack of pictures with me to hang up on my allotted wall space. It was just a few pictures I had lying around, but they brought a little piece of home to a strange environment.

Each time I moved, I brought more pictures with me. They provided a nice spot for my eyes to land on when I needed a breather from writing papers.

When you really need a break from studying, though, the best thing to do is make a chain counting down the days you have until you're free from tyrannical papers.

Even after I graduated and moved into my first post-college apartment, I kept the picture tradition going. Only now I had enough pictures to turn my picture wall into a picture door. Having my own room helped.

When I moved into the apartment I'm in now, I put my favorite pictures in picture frames and hung them up around my living room, because that's what real adults do. But I still had a large stack of pictures on my little bookshelf, generously collecting dust. (You may not know this, but printing simple 4x6 pictures is super cheap. I continued to print my favorite pictures from time to time because I'm paranoid that I'll lose all my digital copies and that would be tragic.) I wanted to put the pictures back up just for old time's sake, but never got around to it.

Until I switched back to 9:00 a.m. church. I've been on 1:00 p.m. church for years and had grown to really love it, so the transition was brutal. But the hardest part wasn't getting up early.

It was all the extra time I had in the afternoons. 

Sadly, I have lost my ability to take marathon naps on leisurely Sunday afternoons, so I've had to find other ways to fill my time. One Sunday I was going a little stir crazy, stuck inside having already done my other go-to Sunday activities, so I decided it was time to liven up my kitchen.

After 2.5 hours of work, I was finished.

For weeks afterward pictures kept falling down due to my sticky-stuff stinginess. Still not even sure if I liked my new wallpaper, I kept re-taping pictures to the wall until I had finally used enough tape to mummify a small child.

Once I got over the shock of seeing so much color where there used to be boring whiteness, I started to enjoy it a little, just like I did in my previous apartments.

There are pictures along the entryway, too—can you see them?

I look at those pictures all the time now when I'm cooking, doing the dishes, and heating up food. I see them and think, "What an interesting life I've had."

One full of laughter, silly antics, and love.

This wallpaper is about as ghetto as it comes, but it follows me wherever I go. It's too precious to just sit in a drawer, unadmired.

If you're having a boring Sunday, here's a challenge for you: see how many pictures you can find that made it onto each of my picture walls. While you're looking, I think I'll go make some cookies.