The Key to Decorating With Kid Art

It’s taken me 15 years of being a parent, but I think I’ve finally figured out the key to decorating with kid art.

Your kids have to stop making that cute handprint art, enter their teen years, start calling you “bruh,” and suddenly you’ll feel all nostalgic about that kid art and want to wallpaper your home with it.

Bruh? Really, kids?

*sigh*

If this situation happens to you and you find yourself digging through bins and bins of childhood mementos wondering why you didn’t save more of your children’s art, don’t blame your earlier rational self.

Your earlier rational self knew that you can’t keep every single piece of kid art, especially the creations with glitter…it multiplies.

*shudders at the thought of glitter in my house*

You’re just in this transition phase where you can see how great it is to have older, independent kids (even if they do call you Bruh from time to time) while missing how adorable they were as toddlers.

I’m pretty sure that’s normal parenting whiplash.

Recently, I have felt nostalgic about the whimsical kid art my children made when they were little, but find it hard to incorporate into my decor.

I haven’t entirely defined my decorating aesthetic, but I’m pretty sure whatever that aesthetic is it does not include pictures drawn on a yellow sticky note.

But that yellow sticky note with a drawing of our family done by one of our children is what started me down this decorating rabbit hole to create a playful, sentimental display on our picture ledges using kid art.

I’ve carried that sticky note drawing around for years.

Years!

I couldn’t part with it, which is funny because I’ve thrown away a forest’s worth of kid art over the years.

This one stuck with me (no sticky note pun intended), but I didn’t know what to do with it.

Kind of like my stories on this blog, it takes me a while sometimes to get to the AHA moment.

The aha moment was if I was going to incorporate kid art into my decor, particularly on these picture ledges, I needed to add multiple pieces of kid art to make the display look intentional.

But not too intentional, you know?

Collected-over-time intentional.

The type of intentional where I say I casually threw this together even though we know I really didn’t.

Oh my goodness, decorating is hard.

Truth be told, I’ve seen many instances of folks decorating with kid art that have all looked great.

Kid art hung on a refrigerator.

Kid art hung on a bulletin board.

Kid art strung along a length of hanging wire.

Kid art professionally framed.

So the real key to decorating with kid art?

I think it’s any display created with love that makes you feel happy to see it every day.

Have you decorated your home with kid art? Do your kids call you bruh or bro too? I’d love to hear about it. You can always leave a comment (I have to approve it before it appears.), send an email, or reach out on Instagram or Facebook.

Thank you for reading my long, winding stories! It really makes my day. If you’d like something else to read, I’ve got you covered.

DIY Picture Ledges (Yep, the ledges in these photos were made by Handy Husband.)

The Unexpected Thing To Save When a Parent Dies (An example of this is shown in these photos, but I didn’t mention it in the blog post. These picture ledges are layered with sentiment and nostalgia.)

The Age Our Kids Started Doing Their Own Laundry (Having big kids has its perks, let me tell you!)