Coat Tree

How was your Thanksgiving? I really could have used a longer break, personally….Oh well. We got back late on Saturday, and before we started decorating for Christmas, I took a few quick pictures of our Thanksgiving décor. It was basically the fall décor with a few additions.

Yeah, there’s a Christmas tree already up…Oh well. Don’t you love the candy corn starburst?

Another angle.

This is straight on, but it’s blurry because I was not looking pretty so I was trying to hide from the mirror

Wanna know what makes me happy? Fast, basically free, and big impact projects.

Meet our mudroom.

Okay we don’t have one. This is the total amount of area I have to work with when you first walk into our basement apartment. So I asked my mother if she was using the coat tree from our youth, and luckily she wasn’t.

It worked, but I decided to give it a little makeover to up the usefulness factor. I took off all the hooks and painted the whole thing black. Then, I bought 2 new hooks for the top, and used the ones that were there down lower, at toddler level. I also added 2 knobs below that for backpacks and dance bags.

Shoes go in the basket, and are periodically cleaned and redirected to the owners room.

Then, I added some vinyl letters just for fun, so everyone has a hook.

Voila! It’s been working great thus far in our small entry

Chillin’ on the Patio

For the 2 of you that entered (you guys don't like these giveaways, do you?), the winner of the Show Me a Story is....
#1
Congrats LeAnn! Shoot me an email with your address and we'll get that to you!
Onto super fun things....Pick Your Plum has awesomely cute leg warmers today!! For $5! for 2...What?!? I'm grabbing some for Halloween costumes and play, if nothing else!

Now, for today's project...For the past while, I have been wanting patio furniture for our little area under the main deck. This is our house. Our front door, back door, play area, patio, well you get the idea. I’ve been trying to make it kid friendly, organized, and a space we can hang out.

So, I was perusing some ads on KSL awhile back, and somebody had listed their patio table and 3 chairs as free. What?! I ran over with my dad and his truck and we loaded that bad boy in. Everything was in decent condition, it just needed to be cleaned up, and a few screws tightened (but really, who doesn’t have a few screws loose?) Here’s the table top when we got it.

I’d already started wiping, as you can tell. It seemed to be some sort of contact paper in a faux marble design on top. So, I wiped it off

and decided to spray paint it. I used Rust-oleom, so it hopefully wouldn’t rust, and would look nice.

After one coat of spray paint.

And here it is finished hanging out on our patio. We’ve used it several times now that the weather is actually cool enough outside. One thing to note is it holds water like crazy. So whenever it rains, I have to go tip the table, but it’s always got a ring, so I just wipe it off before we go eat and we’re good. See those cool gray chairs with the awesome design, those were the ones that came with the table. There’s only 2 at the table though.

This one needs a little bit of help.
I’ve done a few more quick, easy projects for my patio to make it more inviting. You may not be able to tell, but that first picture, I had an old rug I just threw out there for people to wipe off their feet before coming in. So, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a cheap welcome mat. It’s so cheap they don’t even have it on their website. So, it was $9, I think. And plain. I cut out a stencil type thing with mom’s Cricut (it resides at my house because I actually use it ), using a mac and cheese box from the recycling, and cut out the letters h, e, l, and o. I grabbed some acrylic paint, and then just stenciled away. I think it turned out super cute. And fun. And cheap. Favorites.

And what doesn’t scream “Welcome” besides coming home and finding snakes hanging out by your door? Gives me the heebie geebies just looking at the picture. Yikes.

I keep all the kids toys, sidewalk chalk, and the ant spray (does anyone else have TONS of ants? In our house and everything. ARGH) on this set of plastic shelves I got from Wal-Mart while I was in college. They’ve served me well. (they were in my crafting area, but I rearranged and moved things so I could use them outside for storage. Craft room post coming soon!)

I make the kids keep their huge toys by the house, and it’s fairly hidden so it’s not the first thing you see when you come down the stairs to our front door/back door/patio/etc.

There’s our $10 makeover to our patio, thus far. Now we have patio furniture, a welcome mat, and little critters.

Now, I need to get some other projects finished so I can get that door and fence wood away. Nothing like that eyesore. Except maybe that 5 galloon bucket of diapers. I haven’t figured out how to get rid of that except by potty training, and we’re not quite ready for that yet. So any great ideas to camouflage the diaper dumping ground? So people don’t have to see that first thing? I empty it every day, so it’s not too bad….