spray painted doormat

Posted on 03/11/2013 by Christine

The weather was absolutely beautiful this weekend, and I took advantage of it by spending some time outside spray painting a new doormat for our front door. Our old one was falling apart, and I haven’t been able to find any doormats in stores that I like so I figured I’d just make one myself.

This project was quick and easy, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I’ll never buy a ready made doormat again!

Materials

Plain doormat (I got mine from Ikea for $10. Can’t beat that!)

One can of spray paint

Painter’s/masking tape (I recommend using the light green Scotch masking tape for hard to stick surfaces)

Pencil and ruler (depending on your desired design)

I was inspired by this rug that I saw from Serena & Lily. The pattern is a combination of herringbone and chevron. The best of both worlds…how can you go wrong with that?

I started by taping the horizontal lines across the rug, making sure to press the tape in firmly.

The rug was 35″ across so using a measuring tape, I penciled a mark every 5″ on all three pieces of tape. Using the pencil marks as a guide to make sure everything was evenly spaced, I taped the diagonal sections off.

Again I made sure to press firmly on the tape to minimize the chances of any spray paint bleeding under. Crisp lines are key!

For the spray paint, I decided to go with Rustoleum’s Night Tide. This is the same color I used for the base of my fabric covered lampshade. It’s a perfect peacock blue.

After shaking the can well, I stood over the doormat and sprayed down straight onto it (to minimize bleeding under the tape) in long even strokes.

About halfway through, I realized I’d need to do a second coat since the fibers were absorbing the paint pretty well. I didn’t think it was necessary to let it dry between coats so I went ahead and finished the entire doormat.

After letting it sit for a few hours in the sun to dry thoroughly, I peeled back the tape and was happy to see that the lines were nice and crisp.

The pattern turned out just as I hoped it would.

It adds such a nice pop of color to the front porch, and it makes me just as happy to see it on my way out the door…

…as it does coming in.

Strider agrees.

By the way, for anyone wondering I’ve walked on it and wiped my shoes on it several times already and there hasn’t been any paint coming off onto the soles of my shoes at all.

I’ll definitely be spray painting another rug for the back patio door at some point in the future. At less than $15 for a custom doormat, how could I not?

Linking up at:

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breakfast roll showdown: nutella rolls

Posted on 03/08/2013 by Christine

Let’s talk about breakfast rolls. I am probably the last person on earth who wants to get out of bed and put together some complicated breakfast recipe first thing in the morning. If you’re like me, then you will love these breakfast rolls because they are 1) SUPER easy and quick to make and 2) only require a handful of ingredients. Oh and 3) one of them involves Nutella and the other one involves cinnamon, sugar and butter. I mean, what’s not to like?

First up are the Nutella rolls.

Ingredients (recipe adapted from Inspired by Charm)

1 can refrigerated biscuit dough

3/4-1 cup Nutella

flour and sugar for rolling

Yields 8 rolls

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a muffin tin with baking spray.

Lightly flour and sugar your surface, and using a rolling pin, roll out each biscuit until it’s flat and even.

Spread 1-2 tablespoons of Nutella on each disc of dough.

Then tightly roll up each disc and cut into three sections.

Place the three pieces, cut side up into one section of the muffin tin.

Repeat for the remaining discs then bake for about 15 minutes.

For the purposes of promoting safe baking practices, you should let them cool about 5 minutes before popping them out of the muffin tins. But I won’t blame you if you don’t. (I didn’t.)

The original recipe calls for spreading cream cheese icing on these, but in my opinion they’re perfect alone. The icing might take them over the sweetness ledge for me, however if that’s your cup of tea then go for it!

The biscuits are flaky and buttery and if you didn’t think Nutella on a spoon could get any better, just wait until you take a bite of these. The best part is you can pull the sections apart for easy bite size pieces.

I’d recommend making two batches because the first 8 will be gone in minutes. Not that I know from experience or anything.

Next up: Cinnamon Sugar Rolls!

since i’ve been gone

Posted on 03/04/2013 by Christine

Here we are a few weeks short of the one year anniversary of this blog and a few days short of my being married for six months. Time flies when you’re having fun eh? As you may have noticed, posts have been pretty scarce around here due to my being neck deep in wedding craziness, followed by work craziness with a dash of newlywed bliss craziness, plenty of house project craziness and just overall life craziness. While the crazy still ensues, it’s about high time I get back to documenting the goings on around these parts. If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve gotten sneak peeks here and there of updates to the house and recipes I’ve been trying out. If not, then you’re in luck. I present to you some snapshots of what I’ve been up to since I’ve been gone, Instagram style:

Recipes

We’ve cooked a lot of yummy recipes that we’ll definitely be making again and will share some of them here in the near future.

Like these cute Christmas tree cake pops I made for the holidays…

and this artichoke soup…

and these chicken enchiladas…

and these banana fritters…

and these parmesan crusted calamari steaks with lemon caper sauce…

and this farfalle with pistachio cream sauce.

Guest Room

We painted the guest room in Valspar’s Filtered Shade.

I had some trouble deciding which rug to put in the freshened up space. Ultimately I went with Genevieve Gorder’s Arabesque rug on the left.

We took out the bulky bed and added a sofa bed to turn it into a functional TV room when we don’t have house guests.

(pre wall art)

I then promptly changed my mind (big surprise) about the throw pillows and switched them out with these black and white ones.

Living Room

We painted our fireplace and re-tiled the hearth with slate in my beloved herringbone pattern. Okay, more like Devin re-tiled the fireplace, but I directed. I am super in love with it. (Details to come in a separate post.)

Last August we replaced the old mirror over the fireplace with a reclaimed wood one (sorry for the holiday decorations)…

then last week I fell in love with this antiqued glass gem mirror (on sale!) at West Elm.

Dining Room

We got a beautiful reclaimed wood farmhouse table for the dining room along with a new rug and Tolix marais chairs…

and I finally finally have a chandelier. (Separate before/after post to come.)

Office

I took some baby steps towards my office redux. I still need to paint my beloved campaign desk and dresser, but the filing cabinet looks great in there already. Here’s a peek of a new print in the room.

Master Bedroom

Currently we’re concentrating on redecorating the Master Bedroom. I’m really excited about the beautiful rug that will add a fun pop of color to the room.

Here’s a sneak peek of the new dresser and lamp.

So. As you can see we’ve been busy. I’m looking forward to sharing all the details of the above projects with you all!

Also, welcome to all of the new readers who have been popping over from Recipe by Photo. I’m so happy you’ve all been enjoying my spinach artichoke bites .

a park house wedding

Posted on 09/25/2012 by Christine

(Photo credit: Christine Caj)

We did it! I’m officially a married woman. I have a HUSBAND!! Holy smokes it still feels so surreal every time I say that! I’m still recovering from all of the wedding and honeymoon festivities, but in the meantime here are a few photos of our amazing day courtesy of my dearest friends Christine and Michelle.

(Photo credit: MSH Photography)

(Photo credit: Christine Caj)

(Photo credit: MSH Photography)

Everything came together beautifully from the succulent centerpieces to our DIY bouquets and boutonnieres to the homemade favors…it was amazing to see my vision come to life. I’m looking forward to sharing all of the details with you in the coming weeks as well as some work we’ve been doing around the house

a new front porch light fixture and wedding invite sneak peek

Posted on 07/10/2012 by Christine

Remember when I showed you all our newly painted house exterior and mentioned that we hadn’t decided on a light fixture for the front porch yet, but I had found one I liked? But Devin didn’t like it, and I needed a little more time to work on him?

Well, I worked on it .

I love it! A couple weekends ago we went to Lamps Plus and looked at the fixture in person. Not only did Devin end up liking it when he saw it, but it was on sale. Score! Not only that, there’s a matching longer one that we’ll be getting for the back of the house by the sliding door.

I like the simple clean Mission style and the rubbed bronze finish…and the clear seeded glass.

It hangs just far enough off the wall to be noticeable but not in the way.

In other news, yesterday marked the two month countdown to our wedding! I can’t believe how fast time is flying. You may have noticed that it’s been pretty quiet around these parts in the last few weeks. That’s because I’m neck deep in wedding projects, but I can’t share any of them on this blog yet because I want our wedding guests to be seeing all of the details for the first time on the day of. Fear not, I’ll be providing detailed posts on our wedding after I get back from the honeymoon .

To whet your appetite, here’s a sneak peek of the kraft paper tags I made with a custom stamp for our wedding invitations.

I’m really happy with how they turned out, and all of the guests have been loving them…I can’t wait ’til I can share them with you all in their entirety!