Measurement Conversion Fail

Last night, Dave and I ventured out to accomplish a couple of missions:

1. print some wedding pictures to hang in the house

2. frame a print we bought in Spain

I don't want to become one of those people who just hangs wedding pictures all over their house, but, let's face it - I'm a bad photographer and I rarely take pictures, so the 294 professional wedding pictures we have are like a gold mine of cheap wall decorations. Why buy expensive art when I can print pictures cheaply and put them in frames I already own?

I've heard a lot of people say that printing wedding pictures is crazy expensive, which makes me think that none of these people have ever heard of Walgreen's. 20 prints, $13, 10 minutes. That's all it took. I thought we'd at least have to wait an hour to have them printed, but for just 4 cents more, we could have them printed immediately. It's a miracle of modern drug-store services!

Here's part of the finished decor:

I've had most of those frames for a long time... probably since high school, but I still love the way they all look together.

Moving on to our second mission of the night - framing a print.

When we were in Barcelona, we went to this AMAZING Gaudi apartment building called La Pedrera and bought a really great print of the building. I couldn't find a good picture online, but it's basically a picture of this:

We bought it for about 20 Euros, or about $100 (it seemed). I naively thought that we'd easily be able to find a $10 frame back home, and voila, we'd have a pretty print hanging up. And then I'd think, "we only spent $10 on this!" because I wouldn't count the Euros, because once I was back in the US, I'd be like, "Euros?! Out of sight, out of mind. It's basically Monopoly money," because that's the way I vacation.

I know there are a lot of good arguments for having a global standard for measurement systems, but I've never really understood the big issue. Who cares? You go to another country and they use kilometers instead of miles? Figure it out. A 5k is 3.1 miles (that's common knowledge, right?), so just do a little math to figure out the conversion. Or, just don't worry about it, because you're probably on vacation anyway.

Well, I now see - through a very superficial problem - why we really need a global standard. Because when you buy a print in Spain that is 68 x 98 cm, it's near impossible to find a cheap framing solution. And THIS is the "problem" that finally brought me to that conclusion. It's sad, I know. And also, this is sarcasm for anyone who doesn't know me well.

I never really been into getting prints custom-framed, or "doing things the right way," mostly because it always costs too much money and I irrationally think I can accomplish the same, high-quality end product for way less money. But, after searching for a cheaper solution, it seemed like it might be the best bet, so we headed to Hobby Lobby to check out pricing.

Speaking of conversions, here's a little equation for you:

68 cm x 98 cm = 26.7716 inches x 38.5826 inches = not a real size in the US = $134.18 to buy a custom frame

Uhhh, no thanks, Hobby Lobby. You're supposed to be a Christian business, and that is called "ripping people off."

Or maybe not. I don't really know. As I mentioned, I never custom frame anything.

When we first started looking into prices for framing, we considered just buying a frame from Europe since 68 cm x 98 cm is a standard size there. We quickly dismissed it, thinking it'd be way too expensive, but now it's looking like a pretty good option.

Or maybe I'll just buy a too-small frame at TJ Maxx and cut down the poster to make it fit. Kidding. Kind of.

Anyone have a good, cheap solution for this? Is $134 insane for a custom framing? Keep in mind, it's essentially a poster - it's not fine art or anything.

In other news, I walked into the study to write this post this morning, and saw a couple of magazines I'd received in the mail yesterday. I laughed when looking at the covers juxtaposed together, because the combination of them is so stereotypically... "these are magazines that a person like myself would receive" -

I know that being tempted by... "enticing" magazines is more of a stereotypically male problem, but let me tell you, for a girl who's trying to eat healthier and is stuck in sub-zero temperatures right now, getting magazines with pictures of a beach in Greece and brownies is probably not good for me.

I will read them anyway.