Around the house: Little gallery wall

I'm excited to share this gallery wall we created in Cricket's new room. (I'm planning to show you a full room tour very soon.) You've seen several of these items in previous posts—all significant in their own ways. Now we have them displayed together in a place that's easy for Cricket to view but out of reach from her tiny and destructive hands.

You saw the "Oh darling, let's be adventurers" photo and inspiration here. Since I wanted to print the photo in a large square size (12x12 inches) and couldn't find a frame I liked in those dimensions, I decided to mount it on a wooden 12x12-inch plaque from Michael's. To make the sides of the unfinished plaque blend with the photo, I painted them a shade of beige that matches the sand. Then I adhered the photo to the plaque with mod podge. This project was my first attempt with mod podge, and the photo ended up bubbling a bit in the middle; I should have set a book on top of the photo as the glue was drying.  Regardless, it turned out well and makes Cricket smile.

Remember the delightful baby spoon I wrote about here, which belonged to Cricket's great-grandmother? I thought this gallery wall would be the perfect place for it, so I bought a 5x7-inch frame, wrapped the glass in a scrap of linen and hung the spoon from a ribbon on the outside of the linen-covered glass. 

We hung the gallery while Cricket was sleeping. When I showed it to her the next morning, she immediately pointed to the spoon and shouted, "Spoon!" I didn't even realize she knew the word spoon or that she would understand that the thing hanging in the frame with the curly handle was a spoon. I'm looking forward to the time when she discovers her great-grandmother's name and birth year engraved on the handle.

The countdown to baby is really on; we have just a few more weeks to try to finish up our lengthy list of cleaning and home projects!

(See Cricket's completed toddler room tour here.)