When Life Moves Too Fast To Frame It

I’m terrible about pictures. Obviously, I can’t take them well. I can put them on the blog and write words all around them. But I rarely print them. And even more rarely do I frame them.

When we moved into our house, I designated one wall for framed pictures of people we love. We filled it up. I’ve only tweaked it a time or two since I pounded 30 nails into the wall 4 years ago.

So when we finally got around to having some decent pictures taken, I knew I wanted to print them, but I didn’t know what to do with them.

The thing is, our people are growing and changing. Our family will look different in just a few months’ time. I couldn’t see spending money on expensive (or thrifted) frames to hold pictures that were beautiful and I’d treasure them always, but they’d be outdated by the end of March.

Plus, I was out of wall space on the Designated Wall. I had no idea where to add more frames.

We did have a gigantic blank wall that needed attention. But I didn’t want to make another wall full of frames. I wanted something that was a little less static, something I could add to and change on a whim. What I needed was a pretty bulletin board.

But you people know we don’t do “pretty” here. We do fun, we do messy, we do funky… but nothing is allowed to stay pretty here for long.

So we used a trundle bed.

I collected ideas off of Pinterest for using bed springs as bulletin boards. We had a spare trundle bed lying around so, since it was free, and because I promised Andrew we would avoid “shabby chic” at all costs, we had a plan.

And then my uterus got moody and the whole project became the problem of Pops.

He painted the edges black and then painted over that with a high-gloss silver paint. Then he roughed it up a bit and splattered it with more black to give it a vintage, industrial feel. Here’s what it looked like once they installed it on the wall.

P.S. It’s never coming down. If we ever sell this house, I hope they like bed springs on the wall.

This was the result once I crawled out of my bed and pinned the pictures up.

I used a mix of the pictures that we had taken recently and then some I’d been meaning to print for years. (And no, I didn’t personally take any of the pictures that made it to the Bed of Fame. I stole shamelessly from other people and their photography skills.)

I just used silver and black alligator clips to hold the pictures up. I know it’s shocking to hang things that way, but it was easy, cheap, and looks pretty good.

It’s not a perfect solution. But I’d rather be able to hang our pictures and enjoy them NOW rather than wait for the perfect frame, the perfect wall, the safest method of preservation.

These are the moments I want frozen in time. But I don’t need them framed to revel in them.