survivor

I'm no green thumb. I love plants but I don't take great care of them or have a natural ability to know how things grow, where they grow best and what to do to keep them alive. I thought this little guy was a goner. It outlasted most of the plants in my office and grew from a tiny $3 Home Depot plant into a full, lush and green beauty. And then I killed it. I almost threw it away but I'm so glad I didn't because look what I found! A new set of leaves at the base of the plant and a little life at the end of one of the old stems. You rock plant. I'm going to try to remember to water you.

zigs and zags

I have a habit of seeing every piece of furniture not as it is, but how I would make it look. I rescued this coffee table a good while ago from a curb-side trash pile in a local neighborhood. My sister likes to joke about the people who every now and then say "remember when we put the coffee table outside to refinish it and someone stole it?" Haha Lin, it really was with all the real trash! Anyway, here's what it looked like when I got my thieving hands on it:

Pretty ugly but it had me at Louis leg. Seriously, those legs would give Gisele a run for her money! Aside from being so not a color I'd ever use, it also had dings, scratches and even words from a magazine that got wet and was left on the finish. So I wiped 'er down, sanded the top to get out some of the scratches, cleaned it off again and got to work painting. I had a can of regular Kilz primer, the oil-based stuff which I never use but I was being cheap and lazy so that's what I went with. It was easy to work with from a coverage and application standpoint but peeeyew! And also, how on earth are you supposed to get oil based paint off your hands?? I think I used an entire bottle of mineral spirits. Gross.

After the primer dried, I decided that I was done hand-painting and went for my trusty friend, the spray paint can. Can I tell you how badly I want a paint sprayer? Nothing would be safe I tell you, nothing! My entire world would be high gloss white I think. Reigning it in, since I can't afford a paint spayer, I opted for Rustoleum Universal in Gloss White. It's pricier than other spray paint but you can spray from any angle and is so much easier to operate than the little push nozzle ones that need the handle contraption attached. This is what it looks like, you can get it at Home Depot or probably anywhere like Home Depot.

I brought my table outside and put it on an old sheet that I use as a drop cloth and got to sprayin. I love this stuff. So much easier than any other spray I've used. It doesn't have a lot in the can though. You can see in the pic below that the top of the table wasn't flawlessly covered and I used the whole can. I didn't care though because I had big plans for that baby.

While that was drying.... okay I'm totally not that organized. I had this part done already and actually waited days between my spray painting and design painting. Anyway, I am a little bit in love with the chevron print right now and knew that I wanted to do something fun to the top of the table, so those two ideas got married and my table top was their baby. I printed out a chevron pattern on card stock and cut out one "stripe" of it to use as a stencil. I traced the stencil ont o the table with a pencil where I wanted my lines until the whole top was covered. Here I am tracing:

I ended up with 3 lines to be filled in which was a happy accident because I love things in threes and didn't plan it at all. Then I lined the inside (aka: white) lines with painters tape so that I could be careless with my decorative painting skills (which are zero). Once the boring taping part was done, I used a cheap little sponge brush and a .99 tube of gray acrylic paint to fill in. Here's what it looked like with the tape while being painted:

I didn't want the lines to get messed up when I took off the painters tape so I removed it while it was still wet to avoid unnecessary pulling. I think it turned out pretty good! Especially since the whole project cost me $7! That was $6 for the spray paint and $1 for the gray paint, everything else I had on hand. Not too shabby!

image for spray paint found here

who is this Mosby fellow anyway?

Oh Mosby, sweet little Mosby. Well the very short answer is he's the love of my life. Creeeepy. Okay so he's just my dog but he's really awesome and cute. See?

Yeah, he basically gets whatever he wants. He's a 2 year old half yorkie, half poodle and 100% maniac. His full time job is snuggling, playing with his hundreds of toys and giving me a reason to get giddy excited to come home from work every day. Even at only 6 lbs, he can keep up on a 5 mile hike and he has a habit of looking at you like you're a total idiot, when you're being a total idiot. He knows, it's weird. He also is a little bit psychic because no matter what time I come home from somewhere, I'll often get a text from my sister when I'm about a mile out saying "Are you close to home? Mosby just woke up from a deep sleep and is staring at the door". He's a mama's boy and I'm okay with that. It's only annoying like 20% of the time. So that's my little buddy. It's a lot of work and took away some of my precious freedom but I wouldn't trade him for the world! Well, except that day he peed on my couch (!), that day he was free to a good home.

something new to do

I'm taking a stab at blogging. Not because I have a big desire to write for the masses, or hopes of quitting my day job, or even because I think I have such an interesting life. Really, I just want to be able to keep track of the things I do and be able to reference them from anywhere. And a blog is the prettiest and most organized way to do that. I'm calling it joie de vivre because that's always been a favorite sentiment of mine "joy of living" and that's pretty much what I intend to post here. Anything related to the simple things in life that make me happy and I want to document. Most of my posts will probably be home projects or recipes but there will almost certainly be some shameless yorkie-poo pics too. I can't help it that Mosby is so darn photogenic! Anyway, if you're reading this you're probably already my friend so hi! how are you? And if you're not, wow I can't believe you're here but we can be friends too! Hope you enjoy my little adventures, I sure do!