is santa on PB's catalogue list?

After six months of occasional (read: obsessive) scrolling though our honeymoon pictures online, I finally got my act together and started printing some of the ones I would eventually like to frame and display.

That's the good news. The bad news, of course, is that now I need frames.

I'm not normally picky about my picture frames -- the more minimal, the better, at least if you look at the art already hanging in our apartment. When I was most active in photography (back in the pre-digital days of high school), I displayed a lot of my work, but never framed, only matted. I'd like to say it was all to highlight the primacy of the art, but really it's just because that was what we could do in the darkroom.

So now I'm actually trying to have confidence in my ability as an artist and give some of my work the credence it deserves, while being both creative and conscious of interior design in not only our current home but also in whatever home(s) we may occupy in the near or the distant future.

If you made it through that sentence without gouging your eyes out, you probably understand why I've come thisclose to just hurling the prints out the window and forgetting I ever had this idea.

Pottery Barn, however, has a series of multi-size opening frames that come in black or white and accommodate the collage-like display style I'm looking to achieve. They epitomize my personal framed-art design aesthetic.

They are also slightly outside my price range.

Still, I went to the mall yesterday to acquire the three-opening white wood frame for a few of the 4x6 prints I have. It looks fantastic. And despite our recent absurd eucational spending, I need not cringe every time I look at it, because I did not spend my own money.

When I started my seasonal job, you see, I learned that gift cards from one Williams-Sonoma store are accepted at the others. My brain immediately translated this nugget of information as, "I can shop at Pottery Barn!" So I hurried to the frame section, gift cards clutched in my hot little hand, and now have a pretty fantastic start to capitalizing on the one artistic hobby for which I have a shred of actual talent.

I have my eye on the multi-size nine-opening black wood frame for my next project -- which, sadly, my gift cards will not quite cover. However, the other piece of information I learned is that if I were a long-term employee, I would also get my discount at the other stores. It would not be gift-card-funded, but my brain immediately translated this second nugget of information as, "I could shop with abandon at Pottery Barn!"

I may have found incentive to stay on.