Changing Up the Gallery Wall

There are so many ways that you can show case your family memories throughout your home. 
I've said it before and I will say it again- one of my favorite ways to do so is by creating at least one gallery wall in your home. And you can pretty much put one up anywhere. Our living room was one of the first places we put a gallery wall up and recently I decided to change it up a bit.

We started with a blank slate after we moved in: 

After going back and forth about what to put up on the upper part of that wall you see pictured, I decided the easiest thing to do was paint the walls a khaki/beige/green color I mixed together. Then I decided this would make a perfect spot for a gallery wall so I added a few photos we already had (I really didn't want to buy more frames either, so we worked with what we had).
But I always thought the pictures looked a little too small for the space because that wall is so long. So I had kept it in the back of my mind that it would probably be changing at some point so we could add more photos to the mix.

 

And then my parents visited a few weeks ago.
And guess what?!

They brought with them a large plastic tub filled with older photos that were placed in these nice wooden frames....and a light bulb went off!
I thought, "these will be perfect to use for our new gallery wall!"

So I laid out how I wanted the pictures to look by placing the frames on the floor. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I went ahead and nailed each frame up on the wall...and this time, I decided to go with the "Go big or go home" approach by adding a lot more photos. 
Boy am I happy I did!

I think it turned out much better than I imagined and we like it much more now that we can see more personal photos of our family. I also feel that by adding more pictures, the wall space was better utilized. Plus, this will allow me to switch out pictures easily as the kids get older and we have more photos to add.
I also wanted to note that I mixed the colors of my frames up a bit- going with brown, white, and black. It keeps things from looking too matchy-matchy (something I'm not always a fan of in decorating).

How do you hang pictures in your home? Are you a fan of the bigger gallery walls like I am?