Bringing Red to the Table

Hello Monday!  I know most people were sort of dreading today after the nice long weekend, but I’m excited for the week ahead!  I love the first week after Thanksgiving, and I always have.  It’s so fun to watch the changes being made around the neighborhood as people start to decorate their homes for the holidays.  I love seeing the outdoor decor, but I really love getting a glimpse of the Christmas tree inside.  I just enjoy driving around and seeing a little sparkle as I pass by.

In the middle of getting my own Christmas sparkle on I decided to tackle another project.  Why not add more crazy to the mix?  I wanted to create a little better flow from the family room to the kitchen.

The walls colors contrast.  While I don’t feel like every room in my home needs to be painted the same color, I do want the rooms to flow, especially in areas where the rooms are open to each other.  One of the things I love about this house is that the kitchen is open to the family room, but you don’t see the “working” part of the kitchen.  All you see is the eating area from the family room. Since clearly I like the color red, I thought bringing in a little red (emphasis on little) to the table would be an easy way to create a visual flow between the two spaces.  So, off to the fabric store I went.  It’s like a candy shop for me, so I have to make a list.  I wrote down with a black sharpie – ONLY BUY 1/2 YARD!  With Christmas shopping at the top of my priority list right now, I didn’t want to shell out a bunch of money on this project.  I stuck to the plan and bought just 1/2 yard, which cost me $10, of a fabric that I loved at first sight.

It’s an ikat.  Go figure.  I only recovered the chairs at the head of the table.  I stood back and thought, “The other chairs need something too.”

This is just a “test” pic.  I did actually recover the chairs,  but I forgot to take another picture.  Oops!

So, I decided to paint the fabric.

I taped off two lines with Scotch Blue tape with edge lock.  I just eyeballed it, and the stripes look decent (but most certainly not prefect).  It’s all good.  I’m not that in to perfection, and I was going for more of a hand stamped look anyway.  At least that’s the story I’m going with now.

I used craft paint mixed with a little fabric medium and a sponge brush to fill in the lines.

You know you love my leopard slippers that my dad bought me for my birthday!

Yay for stripes!

Then I stood back again.  This time I thought, “Well, that’s good but still something’s missing.”  So, I busted out the alphabet stencils.  Everyone has alphabet stencils in their craft closet right?!

I used a small stencil brush and made sure not to overload my brush with paint.  It’s best with stenciling to use an almost dry brush.  It took me 2 chairs to finally figure out the right spacing.  Live and learn – that is how it goes with most random-not-super-well-thought-out diy projects.  Like I said before, perfection is most definitely not my middle name.

Considering that my kitchen chairs are really just glorified crumb catchers for my little peeps, I’m thinking this will work!

You really only see the words when the chairs are pulled out from the table, but they make me smile when I see them!  This was a really inexpensive way to transform our kitchen eating area, and bringing in a little red to the table does create a nice flow between the two rooms.  I never snapped a pic from the family room so you’ll just have to trust me on that for now.  It was looking like a hot mess with boxes and bins of Christmas decor splattered all over the place.  I thought I’d spare you.

So, how was your Thanksgiving weekend?  Did anyone randomly decide to redo their kitchen chairs?

*Linking up at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Primitive and Proper, Savvy Southern Style, At the Picket Fence, Home Stories A to Z, Thrifty Decor Chick, Miss Mustard Seed, The Shabby Nest, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Chic on a Shoestring