The dining room has been one of those rooms I have always felt inspired to change from the norm and to sit in and dream…other than eat yummy food of course!

The above photo was our dining room when we used to live in Orlando back in 2004, (please excuse the logo, I got the photo from our photo blog). The dark plum paint was already there which we loved and we decided to add the black bookcase complete with a rolling ladder! I was reading rue magazine the other day and there was a quote on pg. 41 that spoke to me: “It doesn’t matter if it’s supposed to be a dining room. How often are we going to use the dining room? Can it also be a library? A study?” It made me miss our dining-library room!! Of course we put a table in there too, so we could actually eat. hehe.

Fast forward to the summer of 2007, when we moved into our house that we live in now.  This is the only photo I can find of our dining room with the red walls. We didn’t do anything special to the room nor did we hang anything on the walls for a looong time. I did not know what to do with it. Check out Gray when she was only 2!

In the fall of 2009, I was inspired by the Urban Outfitters store in downtown Charleston, SC, with their beautiful white moldings and plum walls. I decided that is what we needed to do with our dining room. I know lots of people would think, PURPLE?! And in the dining room?! This is why we didn’t ask anyone’s opinion, we just went for it! Its different, risky, mysterious, lovely, and fun! And my darling husband said, “if you want me to paint the dining room purple, we are definitely going to put lots of pictures up!”

We had a big collection of frames and some mirrors that were just stored in closets, so we decided to make use of them. We wanted all white frames and we wanted to fill them with many of our favorite family pictures. To round out our collection, we also hit the antique stores in town to find some perfect vintage frames! Below are more of the frames that we found after taking the previous photo.

Here they are on our back porch, spray painted by my loving husband…and even Gray was able to help out.

Almost done!

Voila! This project took 6 days and wrapped up by Labor Day weekend in 2009. Just in time for a wedding shower I was hosting. There was a total of 40 white frames and 3 white mirrors!

Most of the vintage frames were originally gold.

I absolutely love hanging out, having guests over for dinner, and hosting parties in this room. It truly inspires me because its so different and I adore seeing my family photos on the walls. I say it is ALMOST finished…still have to decide if we will put in drapes or shutters, find the perfect buffet and chandelier! And all of the pictures in the frames can easily be changed, updated or replaced. Speaking of which, we should probably update some of them now!

We were so honored to have our dining room featured on the National Association of Professional Child Photographers (NAPCP) blog!

Now I am trying to figure out what is the next inspiration room…

Photos in dining room wall from awesome photographer friends: Amber Holritz, Alice Park, Tina Wilson, and hubby Garrett Nudd