Hi There

I finally made a new door mat! I told you guys that after making the new wreath for the front door, making new no-sew pillows, and getting new outdoor furniture, it was about time to have a happy, summery front door mat to finish out the cuteness!

Our old one was functional, but that's about it...Here it is:

It's not like it's ugly...it's just not what I wanted :) So I bought a door mat at Ikea for $4.99 and made plans to spray paint something cute on it in a cute color (very detailed, I know). After looking around Pinterest and google for about a week I decided I just wanted words on it in the bottom left corner so it looked modern and relaxed. I decided on "hi there" because Blake and I say that to each other from time to time while joking (it's from Doug in Up!). Once I decided on what I wanted I went to Microsoft Publisher to help me make it real (I would have used Photoshop, but I know Publisher better therefore it was faster).

I measured the door mat and put the dimensions in publisher so I could get the words the size that I wanted. Once I determined how large I wanted them, I copied and pasted into Word and printed them out! Here's what they looked like:

Then I took my X-acto knife and cut out the letters so that there was a stencil left behind and I taped it onto the door mat like this:

 Then I spray painted that with Krylon's indoor/outdoor spray paint in Blue Ocean Breeze. I also added paper around the edge of those pages once I realized spray paint was getting everywhere (unfortunately it was a bit too late for me to not have a little outline...darn) Anyways, here's how it turned out!

What do y'all think? Should I paint a pattern on the mat to cover up the extra spray paint outlines I made? I've also considered adding a border around the letters using craft paint to make them a bit sharper (definitely should have used painters tape..darn) Have y'all seen this idea on Pinterest and have tried it out? How did yours turn out?

The Oddball

I was really excited about today. Today was going to be a wonderful blog posting day about an entry way nook that I have had no clue what to do with until I found Pinterest and decided I wanted it to be a drop-your-keys-and-shoes-here-station. Then I got super pumped when we cleaned out the garage and I found a table that wasn't being used! And so a plan was born! I would paint the black table white and make it cute with printables and holders for keys and all that cute stuff. Too bad it didn't quite work out that way...Anyway, to the story...Here's the nook that I'm talking about:

And here is the black table that I found in the garage:

I went to Wal-Mart and bought one spray can of Krylon primer and three spray cans of the cheap white paint. I started sanding the table with sand paper (as you can see the beginnings of in the picture above on the left side of the table) but after sanding the whole top of the table and some of the legs by hand, let's just say it wasn't super fun. But I was willing to keep going (once my arm stopped being sore from the workout...I know, it's terrible that that's my workout). Then Blake decided we needed a sander! And I was like heck yes! 

So we went down to wally world and got a rotary sander (the one with the circle on the bottom that spins) for $30 and I went to town! It still took me an hour and a half to just do the legs of the table, but I can't imagine how long it would've taken with me doing it by hand! And true to form, I forgot to take a picture of the table all sanded...which is actually really sad because the wood underneath the four layers of black paint they put on it was actually really pretty! I did get a picture of the back of some of the legs that hadn't been painted! So we'll just use our imaginations!

Isn't that wood super pretty?? I wanted to do some kind of staining it white thing, but then I got lazy and wanted to do it cheaply and quickly, so I went with the spray painting it route. Here's how that turned out:

I'll admit it was pretty splotchy, but after I saw imperfections like this:

And this:

And when I put it in the actual nook and it still looked weird and super splotchy (like this):

And talking to the hubby a bit more, I/we decided we wanted to sand down the table to make it look distressed, but still with white peaking through places.

So another hour and a bit more, and I had this:

Which looked great by itself in the garage, but in the nook it just didn't....go. It didn't fit. It was the oddball trying to fit in with the cool kids...poor fella...

So I'm back to the drawing board! I'm thinking about a custom shelf at table-height to make it fill every part of the nook and hopefully not look so dang awkward! This nook is killin' me! And I have another one in the living room! What to do...what to do....Any ideas? Lord knows I've been scouring Pinterest and the other blogs I follow for ideas, but nothing has clicked just yet. Oh well! It's the journey that makes the story interesting, right?