Making Our Family Barn Mural

During our recent, yearly family get together we completed a family barn mural.  You maybe have seen barn quilts, we went with a symbolic mural design instead.  My family has owned and farmed the land my parents live on for over 100 years.  The mural shows some of the main crops and livestock that have been a part of the farming history:  tobacco, corn, cattle and pigs.  A tree was added in the middle to represent family.

First, the painting process.  Everyone chipped in on the painting-

And done!
The gray was painted around the edges to blend with the weathered barn wood.

I wonder if my great great grandparents would approve.

Kind Of A Big Deal

I don't expect everyone to get as excited about this as me but......  one room's windows (our dinning room) have all been framed in!!  That means no exposed drywall around any windows in one room.  This is the first room in the house to achieve this status.

They still need to be painted like the one on the right.  Jonathan also made the stool and apron (the two most bottom pieces) different on the newer frames.  It's only slightly different so it is hard to see in the picture.

It has been a busy month at work for Jonathan but he has made time each evening to work on it-

Finishing these two windows has taken some time just due to normal daily business (mostly summer travels, yard work and starting a farm.... wait do we have kids?).  Here is Matthew helping last February with some progress (guess Jonathan prefers his gray sweat pants when working on trim)-

He likes his brad nailer.... makes the job soooo easy-

Did you notice we finally have something else hung on the wall (between the two newly framed windows)?  This was hung in celebration of hanging something else (I am serious).  This was our first piece of art purchased from a local pastel artist Kelly Milukas called Blue Barn-

It was hung in celebration of finally getting our second art piece and hanging it.  We bought this giclee of hers last weekend during the South Coast Artist Tour called Lavender Fields.

I like that you can see it from down the hall-

It helps balance out the dominant shelves-

I want to end with a honesty moment.  Before I straightened up the living room for the picture, this is the damage that my 11 month old had unleased on the room.

Tidiness is not her thing, but she does like a clean window-