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Ruffle Pillow / Florals / Gold Scalloped Wall Candle Holder / Double Wall Sconce / Sconce Shades / Blanket / Gold Extending Wall Taper Candle Holder / Curtains

Good MORNING!!! I think… John and I are currently aboard a 10h 10m flight from Nice back home to Atlanta so I am not sure what time it is where at the moment! Gotta love these crazy long flights. Obviously the one, not so fun part of loving our France life. I will say we’ve gotten into a groove with it though so it isn’t so so bad. You kind of learn what to take and how to pass time. I try and work a tad on my laptop… we play cards… maybe some travel sized Backgammon… watch a movie or TV series for a bit… and then we only have like seven more hours to go. HA!

Today I am sharing the freshly completed gallery wall in our France apartment living room! Aside from possibly our little dining table I shared yesterday… this is the longest running project in our little France home. Two years to COMPLETE! But it’s been a fun, artwork finding journey. So originally originally I had wanted to do a gallery wall above our “dining area”. I planned maybe doing some type of upholstered banquette against the wall and then a gallery wall above. I honestly cannot even remember what I planned to do over the sofa but our plans evolved and we flipped the big gallery wall idea over to the living room.

I’ll just go ahead and put it out there that gallery walls are NOT EASY. They certainly aren’t my forte and not something I do super often. I think I am just enough obsessive compulsive that when one picture is even slightly unlevel it makes me crazy. HOWEVER, we did start doing little command strip stickies at the bottom of frames… starting with the bathroom in our cabin a couple of years ago… and it’s definitely made me say… okay, I think I can handle this! 😉

And while I am being honest and all, I will also say that over the course of the last two-ish years we have “waisted” a good bit of money on artwork and prints that I THOUGHT we would use in this gallery wall and then did not in fact use. Bringing quite a few home to possibly use there. Fingers crossed! I think our home in France is just so small and there’s so much going on elsewhere that I decided it needed BIG pieces instead of a lot of smaller ones. I also realized that I liked the look of original paintings rather than matted prints. Something about the white mattes along with the sheen on the glass just felt too busy.

The first piece we found was back when we very first purchased our home in the Fall of 2023 and it has hung all by itself over our dining table until just last week…

Next was this GORGEOUS, huge floral piece. We actually found it at the same antique store in Antibes that we found the one above. It’s a beautiful little store on a corner in Place Nationale set back inside black iron gates… right by our place actually! They always have the most unique selection.

Our next find was all John and just so happened to be a naked lady LOL in Isles Sur la Sorgue, France last January 2024 when we were on a hunt for our mantle, dining table and kitchen island…

And then finally, our biggest splurge! We found this STUNNING original piece in Nice just a few weeks ago from the 1800’s! It’s an artist out of Northern France and the color and size of the piece just worked so perfect for my vision…

From there, we laid everything out and played around a bit, measuring the extra spots before doing a little more shopping. John had the idea of laying it all out on the floor to avoid too many holes in the walls and it was a perfect plan. Because I definitely would have had to hang, re-hang and hang again to get it all right.

We then did a little more shopping at the Antibes antiques market last Saturday to fill those spots! Antibes has the most AMAZING antiques market in Place Nationale every Thursday and Saturday!