Glass Cases of Emotion...

I linked this up to.The Pinterest Challenge at Young House Love There are so many amazing projects linked already.

While perusing the Martha Stewart website several months ago, I came across Darcy Miller's "Frames and Scrapboxes."  Not only are they lovely reminders of her family history, but they are also just plain beautiful.  

I was smitten.

I already had two shadow boxes hanging in our main hallway.  One houses a card my parents gave me for my birthday a few years ago, and the other is filled with pearl-colored buttons that were passed down from my great grandmother.  After seeing Miller's creations, I was inspired to try and jazz them up a bit.  So, I simply added some fun patterned paper around the card, and inserted my childhood red-haired girl Little Person.   It instantly added so much more charm and fun to what had been just a plain white square.  

But I wanted to do more...

On our last trip to Ikea, I bought three more square shadowbox frames, and eagerly got busy filling them with fun mementos and photographs.  I loved how they turned out.

But still, I wanted to do more...

Luckily, my BFF needed a trip to Ikea last week, and I got to tag along.  I bought three more frames.  I shuffled through more stacks of old photographs and keepsakes, until I had six adorable little frames to hang over my desk.

There's one from Madeline's first birthday.

There's one for sweet baby Ellis.  It has her hand and footprints, hospital cap, and a butterfly a blogger sends others in memorial of her own stillborn daughter.

There's one for Madeline's birth that includes her hospital bracelet and ID card from the nursery.   I still can't believe that tiny baby is the same little girl who just read me a story before bedtime!  Crazy town.

There's an old Drum Corps photograph of Eric, and I dug through piles of his old stuff until I found the same arm tassel from the picture.

I framed the poem Eric's father wrote and recited at our wedding along with a small photograph.  I also included  the Vermont needlepoint I made as favors.    

And there's Madeline's first school photograph complete with a yellow school bus and some finger-painted trees she made in the background.  The block was mine when I was a baby, and it just happens to have the letter M on it....for Maddie Bear.   (There's an S for Mumma Bear on the other side too.)    

 And still...I want to do more.

As I went through boxes of photographs, I kept thinking of new ideas.  There's an old school journal of mine from third grade.  There's Eric's baby book.  There's a sweet baby dress that both Madeline and I wore and were photographed in.  There's a copy of my great-grandmothers handwritten sugar cookie recipe and some cool cookie cutters.

I'd much rather have these things on a wall where I can look at them and smile than stuffed in a box only to be rediscovered every few years.  Still, I think I'm going to quickly run out of wall space, and some of my ideas require bigger boxes.  Maybe I can fit in one more row of three between the ceiling....hmmm.  

 And for those of you who know me in real life, and are sitting there astounded by the cleanliness of my desk, let me keep it real.

This, dear friends, is the area directly to the left of that little rectangle of organized peace and harmony.  I won't show you the wall of toys and destruction against the other side of the room.  I'm sure you can imagine.  

UPDATE: A friend just let me know that Michael's is having a big frame sale this week. Forty percent off shadow boxes in combination with a twenty-percent-off coupon on all frames. My collection will be growing!