My New Project

I think it's time for a little confession.  I hate don't care for shopping.  I know, I know, I'm a female, I should LOVE shopping, right?  Well, I don't like it at all.  It stresses me out.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but I've actually had panic attack symptoms in Costco.  Seriously, I felt panicked and my chest tightened, it was hard to breath, it was scary.  Even now, when I go to Costco, I have to have a list and budget and an escape plan :-)  HA! 

I think my dislike for shopping comes from 2 things.  First, money stresses me out and shopping requires money.  Second, these past few years I have become more and more aware of the great divide between America and the rest of the world.  The abundance I see when shopping overwhelms me and makes me question my life, my financial resources and the choices I am making.  It's hard because shopping stimulates our economy and as each product is purchased, money trickles down to someone.  Shopping creates jobs, from the store owner to the manager, sales clerk, stock person,  delivery person, distributor, manufacturer and all the employees involved in making the product.  You can even count the marketing team and the people who cleans the store at night.  Yikes, shopping is important and many people rely on me buying things.  It overwhelms me!

I'm not cheap.  I do believe in buying quality and that "you get what you pay for".  7 years ago we bought our first DSLR camera.  It cost $1,000, best grand we have ever spent!  Seriously, we loved that camera until it broke on my trip to Ethiopia last year.  After my trip, we determined it would cost more to fix the camera than the camera was worth.  So we saved up another $1,000 and bought our second DSLR camera.  I don't regret it one bit!  And I didn't have panic attack symptoms because the hubby went to the camera store without me :-)

We have taken some amazing pictures over the past 7 years and I have a few on display in my home but I've really been wanting to display more.  Printing pictures is relatively cheap but nice picture frames can be expensive.  Since I don't like shopping and spending money stresses me out, I've decided to be creative and make some frames (I'm not real creative, have I mentioned that?)  I've seen this idea before in magazine and this morning I was at a coffee shop where they had used windows as picture frames.  I was inspired!

Here is my new project.  We've had these 2 windows frames for 14-1/2 years (our entire marriage) and we got them for free.  I dug them out today.  I plan to use some paint I already have and make some fun picture frames.  The painting and picture selection will be easy, the hard part is hanging them.  I'm leaving that up to the hubby!  I hope to post the finished product in a few weeks.