My Entry Wall: It Makes Me Happy : )

You may have noticed I’ve had a little bit of the craft/décor bug lately. I made some Christmas gifts, repurposed Judah’s old crib spring into a memo board inspired by The Handmade Home, shared my Toy Story Halloween costume attempt, and then last week I linked up to Young House Love and Bower Power’s Pinterest challenge with my spring wreath. What can I say? It goes in spurts. : )

I want to share another one with you today (if you don’t mind) that I’m so excited about. As in, ‘I go and look at that wall just to see how good it looks several times a day’ excited. Yes, I am a nerd. No, I do not plan to change.

In our house, there’s a big blank wall right when you walk in the front door. We really enjoy having people over and I wanted that wall to make a statement. Here is what it looked like before with a bunch of small pictures and a book page mirror I made from my sister’s discarded Confessions of a Shopaholic book. : ) Use whatcha got, right??

 

Also, I didn’t tidy up that area before taking the picture so you can see my coffee mug, and Mr. Bug’s watch on the buffet, the bag still wrapped around the newly-purchased lamp, and some kind of train toy on the floor. And this was a good day. Housekeeping is not my strong suit!

Here’s a better picture of the lamps I bought to use here. (Thank you, tax return!!) I really like the bases and the fact that they’re simple and clean but still have some shine to them. They’ll also be really versatile so that I can move them around to other rooms if I want to in the future. I did not, however, love the pattern on the shades. I am not on the ‘animal print’ train even a little bit. It’s just not me. But since they were a perfect drum shade (not tapered toward the top), I knew I could recover them and just picked up some fabric at the same time I bought the lamps. Hobby Lobby truly is your one-stop shopping center!

I tackled the lampshades before really doing anything to the décor on the buffet. I initially thought I would need to use a spray adhesive to apply the fabric to the shades, but in the end I went with what I know best and busted out the glue gun. I was the tiniest bit worried about being able to see beads of hot glue kind of poking up here and there under the fabric, but if you make sure to press the fabric on right away and flatten out the glue, there shouldn’t be any problem. I used my pinking shears to trim the fabric along the edges before gluing it on the top and bottom to make sure it didn’t fray. Here they are all finished and pretty.

 

 

Then I tackled the wall. Not literally, although by this time I had had two cups of coffee which is waaay too much for this mama. I brought in a couple of frames that I had sitting around and switched the paper mirror…thing for an ‘S’ monogram I made a few years ago for our house in Kearney. I was glad to finally find a place for the name plaque my sister got us for our anniversary last June and I loved being able to add our wedding picture into the mix.

 

It took a while (and a few picture texts to my sister for input) but I finally got an arrangement I liked. Then my wonderful husband helped me get it all up just the way I wanted. ‘Cause he’s the shiz. : )

Thar she blows! Doesn’t it look pretty? I’m so happy with it and I really dig the way the pop of color on the lamps brightens it all up. (My apologies for saying ‘dig.’ It won’t happen again.) The items on the buffet itself were mostly things I had. The glass apothecary jar was a TJ Maxx find for $4.50! Since taking these pictures I have filled it up with sparkly Easter eggs and my girls thinks it’s pretty great. Hmm. Now that I'm looking at this picture, someone should do something about those cords hanging down... Ah, well.

One thing I am trying to remember and that I actually said to my husband as we were trying to find an arrangement we liked was this idea from The Nester: it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. I need to refinish the buffet and I now know I need to do something about those cords. : ) I know my little entryway isn’t perfect and that I’m not winning any design awards, but it’s my favorite spot in the home right now. It feels very ‘me,’ and that’s so nice to look up and see at the end of the day.