Hopscotch, Anyone?

First of all, I must say thanks for all the kind words and pins on Pinterest this weekend!  I have this feeling there will be more gutter shelves going up in kids rooms and playrooms!  If you've found my blog through Pinterest, welcome!!

Here is another project that I completed a couple months ago, but I haven't posted about until now.  Several months ago I posted about the one dollhouse room that we have completed so far (more rooms have been planned, and Lucky and I are excited about finding some time to work on it!!):

I have incorporated two pieces of this pretend room into our real life home decor.  I already showed you that the sunburst mirror was a mini red replica of the mirror I made for our guest room:

And now, meet our new foyer rug:

It's just a simple jute rug like this one that I painted using a combination of flat white paint and fabric medium.

Here is my plan:

I first used painter's tape to mark where I wanted my hopscotch lines to be.  Then I surrounded that tape with additional painter's tape.  I pulled off my original hopscotch tape lines and painted in that area.  These images help to illustrate the concept:

I thought about stenciling in the numbers, but it would have taken me a while to print out numbers on the ol' computer and mark them with a Sharpie and then paint them.  Because it was nearing dinner time, I took a risk and free handed them.  I think they turned out just fine!  

The rug may get moved to our mudroom at times, but for now, I love greeting people with such a kid friendly rug!  And it's keeping the kids busy in the winter time in an area where I can keep an eye on them.  I had picked up a couple hopscotch markers from Joann's in the $1 section, except they were 50% off making them 50 cents each.  They were bright pink, orange and purple.  The instant gratification of being able to use something as is was nice, but the colors wore on me.  I just recovered the gravel filled markers with scrap fabric that I sewed into pouches:

They live in a little bowl on my campaign chest in the foyer.

In this image, you can see some chairs I painted and recovered last fall during our big furniture refinishing frenzy.  You will be seeing more of the houndstooth fabric that I picked up for $2.70/yard last fall.

These chairs were an orange wood color originally.  They were $4.99 each at Goodwill.  Including supplies and the chair cost, it was less than $20 total for both chairs.

My next area of focus in the entry area will be this little nook:

I plan to add some sort of wall treatment, a different mirror, and maybe some wall hooks too.

I love this chest!  

This bulb bouquet was my Valentine's present from Bill, and it has been so much fun to watch it change and bloom.  We have a new flower surprise almost every morning!!  In the spring, we'll plant the bulbs outside, too.  I used to tell Bill not to buy me flowers because they can be so expensive, but I'll take living flowers like this any day!!  Thanks dear.

I have no idea how or why I started talking about flowers during a rug post.  But that's all I've got for today!  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  

Linking up to Finding Fabulous.

Linking up to The Shabby Nest.

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick.

Linking up to The Rooster and The Hen.

Campaigning in Our Foyer

This past spring, I picked up a Dixie campaign chest at an Apron Chicks Barn Sale.  It was $50 and needed some brass polishing and a new paint job.

Here is the before:

And after some thought, I decided I wanted to place this piece in our disorganized front foyer area.  Here is the 'everyday' before of that space:

Messy!

After switching around the 'new' campaign chest with the former table, here is what we welcome guests with now: 

I used Rustoleum's new tintable oil based paint for this project.  I chose the color 'Yorktown', but I quickly found that the Rustoleum brochure doesn't accurately display the colors that the tinting process creates.  I ended up going back to Menards to have the color tweaked a bit, otherwise this chest would have been neon blue!!  The paint went on super well.  I did need to do two coats of it, but the finish is glossy perfection (or as perfect as it's going to be done by hand with a brush:)!)  Bill took care of the hardware using Brasso and in a few cases, some gold spray paint.

I still have several more tweaks to make on this space.  In the very near future, we'll be using our mudroom (which is a post for another day) as our main entry into our house, so we shouldn't have such a big shoe pile up in this location.  Also, I'm planning on switching out the mirror, adding some hooks for coats on the side walls of the campaign chest alcove, painting the alcove and accessorizing a bit.  Additionally, we'll be updating the foyer rug, and we'll be tweaking the 'shoe putting on'  set up to the right of the campaign chest alcove as well.

Now, back to work for me!  We've got lots more furniture to transfer from the garage to the house before my husband imposed Saturday deadline for clearing out the garage for winter parking!  Wish me luck:).

Linking up to Miss Mustard Seed.

P.S.  Total Project Cost = $60 for the chest, paint and Brasso