Read Me.

I love typography. I always have. Maybe it's the years of writing thank you notes when I was a child, maybe it's my years of art training, maybe it's that I secretly hope having letters and type everywhere around the house is a subliminal reminder to my family that they should be reading. I don't know, but I love it.

If something can be monogrammed, I monogram it.

I collect vintage letters.

I've watched the movie Helvetica three times now. I want to buy the DVD just because I love the cover.

I just bought the new Taschen book "A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles" because it's beautiful, and because it comes with a code that allows its owner to download 1000 new fonts to use. Heaven!

So when I noticed this trend in graphic design lately, I felt I had finally found a style of art that spoke to me (see post "Art Shmart" for context):

If you'd like to display your art and boss your children around at the same time, good resources I've found for this type of art are Keep Calm Gallery (thanks, Melanie, for the tip!), Concrete Hermit, Typographic Posters. Go wild. You may even find one that says "I'm not going to tell you again: clean your room."

Resolution #1: Update my family gallery wall

The last time I did my family gallery wall, I was still pregnant with Katie, who's now six. My children are suspended in time, and anyone visiting my house would think they're 8, 5, and a newborn. Regular Suburban Zen readers know that's not the case.

One reason I haven't updated the wall is that I love looking at the old pictures of each of the Furber kids -- I remember precisely when and where each one was taken, and what else happened that day:

• The picture my friend Erin took at her house in Olympia -- Jack was wearing Andie's pants because he'd taken a dip in the bay in his own and needed a change.


• The Christmas card picture from the year Katie was born. Andie edited the film and picked the picture because her hair looked the best in that one.


• The picture of Jack on his first day of Kindergarten -- he asked me right before school "Mom, what's the best way to meet friends?"


• The picture of JP and I on our honeymoon kissing in the front of a catamaran.

Every time I think I'm going to update those pictures, I can't decide which I can bear to take down. I've decided instead that I'll just add to the wall until it's completely full. Now I can add the new pictures I've been meaning to add, like this one:

without retiring any of my favorites.

And Dad, remember the shot of us with the Elvis statue at the House of Blues? That's going on the wall too.

#23 Update the Gallery Wall for the Season

Like all families, we generate lots of art. I especially like the Christmas art that comes home each year. My favorite is the reindeer made with Andie's foot as the head and her hands as the antlers. Art like that has to see the light of day at least once a year, so we update our gallery wall for the holidays by putting two or three of our favorite pieces of the kids' art into the frames. No need to buy new frames, just temporarily bench a few photos, slide in some cute holiday art, and you're done in 20 minutes.

Art Schmart

It's funny that my last post contained so many references to art. The truth is, I have no art in my house. When my husband and I bought our first house, we thought we'd collect some art when we got more established, but we started collecting kids instead.

Now my house is the best kind of gallery, filled with memories of our family's life. We collect photos, maps, cards, art made by our kids, and proudly frame and hang it all. And I mean all.

Some of our very favorite installations are:
Our entry hall that's completely covered in photos of the kids. The gallery has evolved with time, so it's a fun time capsule showing the kids at all ages and stages. We always frame in black frames, with black or white mats, and convert our photos to black and white so we can add to the gallery whenever have something new.

Four 4' square frames in our living room with our favorite pieces by our house artists Andie, Jack and Katie. When presented in the right way, kids' art can look like beautiful pieces of modern art -- great color, and kids seem to have a natural eye for composition.

A world map my husband gave me for Christmas a few years ago. He marked all the places we've visited, together and apart, with different colored pins before he gave it to me. The map has come in mighty handy in our elementary school phase for geography lessons, and the kids love to hear our travel stories. For now anyway.

A big pinboard at the end of the hall where we pin postcards, letters, leaves collected by Katie on her nature walks, stuff from our various roadtips. We add to and subtract from the pinboard all the time, so it's a rotating chronical of our family adventures. It's very fun to stand in front of the pinboard and meditate on our happy family life.

I've resigned myself to the fact that, unless one of my children grows up to be a professional artist, my art collection will remain only sentimental in value. However, I love the confidence my kids get from seeing their photos and art proudly displayed in our house, and the walk to the bedroom each night past the entry hall, the living room, the world map, and the family pinboard is better than any gallery walk I can imagine.