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Monday, June 10, 2024

Quick Makeover for a Couple of Porch Accessories


Once again, spray paint to the rescue. A couple of items on our front porch had a distressed finish, a Welcome sign and a pair of wall trough planters. This was fine for the look I was going for before, but now I wanted a cleaner look. 

What I love about spray paint is that if I decide to go back to a distressed look at a later date, I can do that with spray paint, too. But for today, I decided I wanted the three items painted black.


The Welcome sign was easy. I simply took it down and sprayed it on a sheet of cardboard. Once dried, I rehung it, moving it up on the wall about 6 inches, so it wasn't part on white, part on gray.


The wall troughs were a bit more involved. I could only unscrew one out of four screws. My husband wasn't home, and I wanted to get this done that morning. 


So I decided to spray paint them while still attached to the wall. 


I used paper, cardboard and duct tape to cover all of the wall and floor that could get sprayed. And I used another large sheet of cardboard to deflect paint from the wall and floor beyond the taped paper/cardboard. I held the deflecting cardboard in one hand while spraying with the other. This worked out really well. The more difficult part of painting the troughs was ensuring there were no gaps in paper/cardboard coverage. The spraying itself went quickly. After I pulled the paper off the wall, I found one small smudge of black paint on the white brick. I used some white acrylic paint to cover that bit.

So here are the end results.

the Welcome sign

the wall troughs

I used the Rustoleum 2 X spray paint in Canyon Black, satin finish on all three. I finished and cleaned everything up before lunchtime on Friday. So this was a quick project, in my opinion.

I'm super happy with how they turned out. They're not perfect. But my new saying is this -- good enough is downright fabulous. Love the look.


I need to get some coir trough liners for both of the planters, then fill them. I'm getting close to finishing this project.

Thursday, June 6, 2024

Decorative Paper Party Napkins for a Fraction of Original Cost


I love using decorative paper napkins for celebrations. But I don't love their retail prices. So in spring and summer I check neighborhood garage sales for unopened packages of these fancy napkins. I will pay up to 50 cents for an unopened package, but also find them priced at 25 cents. I only buy what I truly love and will use in the next year or two, which usually means I will buy 3 or 4 packages each garage sale season.

I found these really pretty napkins, above, in pink and blue with a hydrangea pattern and this other lovely floral border pattern with the black accents for 50 cents a package, unopened, at a neighbor's garage sale in early May. 


These Christmas napkins were just 25 cents for an unopened package, found at another garage sale a different weekend.

The hydrangea napkins were originally priced at $3.00, and the black border napkins were originally $5.00. The price sticker on the Peace Christmas napkins has been removed.

We used the hydrangea napkins for our Mother's Day brunch and plan on using the black floral border napkins for Father's Day. It's probably obvious that the Peace napkins will be used at Christmastime.

I imagine some folks buy these napkins at retail, expecting to use them some time and then forget or have too many others to use. Or perhaps they received them as a hostess or other small gift. In any case, I get to be the lucky beneficiary of their paper napkin abundance.

Getting my pretties without breaking the bank.

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