With Christmas approaching, Lindsay and I set out to shop for presents for family members on the weekend after Thanksgiving. We wanted to get a head start on shopping and be finished early for once! Our first and only stop on our shopping trip was World Market. Since they have a wide variety of products in store that are suitable for almost anyone, we figured this would be a "one stop and done" type of trip. We walked around the store with our basket for about an hour gathering gifts that we though would be good. The more we walked, the more we thought about what we were settling on and the variety of things in our basket. Little by little, we started unloading a full cart until we were back where we started...with nothing in our basket. That's when it dawned on us that we were just buying gifts for the sake of buying something rather than really getting each person something that they would really enjoy. After about an hour and a half of loading and unloading our cart, we left World Market without spending a penny.
Now some would say that it was a wasted trip, which is understandable. But I think that's the experience we needed to kickstart our creativity and start thinking about what we could make for people that they would truly enjoy. The first thing that came to mind was a hanging porch swing that we had seen online several times. Since my parents own a lake house with a good sized porch, this would be the perfect addition to the wooden chairs that we bought them last Christmas. This turned out to be a very easy build that was constructed within a couple of hours. It did take a little longer than normal to stain due to the small gaps between the seat and back boards, and the spar varnish for weatherproofing takes a day to dry between coats. But for around $75 for materials and hardware for hanging, this was a great gift that will be used all the time. More pictures to come once the swing is hanging in place!
Now some would say that it was a wasted trip, which is understandable. But I think that's the experience we needed to kickstart our creativity and start thinking about what we could make for people that they would truly enjoy. The first thing that came to mind was a hanging porch swing that we had seen online several times. Since my parents own a lake house with a good sized porch, this would be the perfect addition to the wooden chairs that we bought them last Christmas. This turned out to be a very easy build that was constructed within a couple of hours. It did take a little longer than normal to stain due to the small gaps between the seat and back boards, and the spar varnish for weatherproofing takes a day to dry between coats. But for around $75 for materials and hardware for hanging, this was a great gift that will be used all the time. More pictures to come once the swing is hanging in place!