Anenome Table

This was a table makeover which was one of my first forays into painting and distressing.  I learned lots of things along the way including: don't sand your finger it hurts, if you listen to a song on repeat for 5 hours in the open garage on a Saturday afternoon, the neighbours will despise you, and of course, don't eat yellow snow.

This is how the table started it's life, likely in the 1970's, I'm pretty sure my family had a table like this, which is in the happy background of my childhood Christmas pictures.  It was fugly then and nothing has changed obviously.  I picked it up for $5 at a Goodwill.  

Then I painted it with.....paint....and....crap I seriously can't remember what I did to make it look like this.  It may have been an experiment with home made milk paint, I know I did that once....

Whatever the case, I didn't like it so I repainted it...um..dark gray.  Sorry - I really did have all the paint colors and such information in my old blog (look to the sky and yell "WHYYYYYYYY??!!!").  But now it will have to do to use descriptive words like dark and gray.  pfft.

Well, obviously dark gray didn't satisfy me either so I painted it AGAIN.  This time....light..gray.  

Actually, I found this lovely paint swatch thingy which tells me I eventually landed on Behr's Gray Morning ha HA.  

Then I oh-so-seriously contemplated which color to use for the bird which I was going to stencil somewhere on it.  

A bunch of nice people lodged their vote as to the color for my bird.  

And I went ahead and ignored them all and stencilled a giant anenome on it instead. 

I used a stencil for it from Cutting Edge Stencils, which is the neatest online stencil provider.  They have all kinds of awesome things there.

I sold this baby in one day to a girl who loved it pretty fiercely.  I concurred this as I watched her stuff it into her van as fast as she could, breathing hard, as if I might change my mind and take it back.  Tee hee.

Chalkboard Window

Feast your eyes.

No, really.  Look closely at the crud covered window.  Now imagine what the crud on a crud covered window would be, if you found the window in an old barn.  

A cow left a peice of itself here.  Probably several cows actually, which I got to enjoy when I began cleaning it.

I remember that I cried a little...

I painted out the glass white first.  Because reasons.  

Then I taped it off and painted the black chalkboard paint on. But as you can see, I left the weathered wood and traces of cow poo for authenticity.  

Then I labored over the numbers that I drew on with chalk (for real, it took forever).

Lastly, I apparently photo shopped the tookers out of this picture and made it appear as if it were under flourescent lighting.

I eventually hung it in my foyer, which had undergone a makeover as well, as I will show in another post.

Now I have a window that I cannot see out of, but rather use as a reminder everyday, of just who we all are.  

You're welcome family. 

   

Distressed Bench

This was one of my first attempts at painting and sanding out corners for a "distressed" look.  I was very excited about it.  I sanded everything out after that.  Even my husband.  

Apparently I was forgetting an important factor in the project documentation.  That being the "before" picture.  

After all, without a before picture, no one would know that this bench used to be black.  They might just think I took a picture of my entry bench.  

Hopefully I learned a valuable lesson here.

My Deleted Blog

This blog is for myself.  It is to motivate me to get projects done around my house.  However, if it is of any use to anyone, or if people want to laugh at my ineptitude, then they are welcome to.  There will be much self-mockery happening here.

I used to blog a few years ago.  My blog was called Wish Simple.  It was called Wish Simple because Simple Wish was already gone.  As was Wish Simply, and Simply Wishing, and any other combination you can think of that made any kind of sense.  So I was stuck with Wish Simple.  

I deleted my blog after a few months.  And I mean I deleted it completely and totally and irrevocably.  And now I have to have a new blog name because of my short sightedness. 

So here it is. 

(I actually live on several acres.  And although there are a few clumps of trees scattered about, it hardly qualifies as woods.  However,  "Treeless Acres" didn't have quite the same ring to it.  And besides, I spent a very long time sitting in front of the computer trying to find something that hadn't already been spoken for.)

I had a lot of posts I spent a lot of time on, on my last blog, and I'll never be able to recreate them so I'm not even going to try.  Instead I'm going to post my before and after pics of completed projects from the past as I work on my new ones.  

So here's one that was one of my very first ever posted projects.  It entailed painting a rocking chair I got from goodwill for $15. 

Before

 After

I used to have all the helpful paint colours, bitter, bitter, but now I have nothing.  nothing....  

I believe it may have been called polo blue, and I did have the foresight to paint it in an outdoor paint finish, (pat pat).

Honestly, I find this picture of the after rocking chair to be bleak and foreboding. Will someone rock?  Will someone roll?  Why is it so grey and gloomy if the sun is apparently shining?  Is it the dirty thirties dust bowl Kansas?  Why is that topiary tree so cheerful?