Awesomest Coffee Table Ever! Or, I've Had Too Many Washington Apples....

All righty-roo, I've had a few Washington Apples tonight courtesy of the mister (are you seeing a theme here?) so it's time for yet another blog installment. This is long, yo. Two in a a month. Go me. Ugh, I am terrible at this blog thing. Whatevs.

So we had this cheap coffee table that we've had for the past 4-ish that was starting to look like crap. By cheap I mean it actually cost us about -$200. We bought a couch, a week later the couch was on sale with a free ottoman or coffee table, I called and got the coffee table with a couple hundred back. Pretty much the highlight of my year. Well, second third to getting married and buying a house and whatnot.

So I stumbled upon this cool coffee table redo at Mr. Kate. How easy is that?! And I had the perfect book; some old French book that was falling apart. It was seriously old. The book was held together with wire. My mom, who was down visiting for part of this project, and I joked that it was probably some priceless book whose pages I was ripping out and covering with a generous layer of Mod Podge. I don't want to know, so I won't be showing any close-ups. That, and I have a shitty camera that doesn't do closeups.Here's how this project went:

1. Crappy coffee table Day 1:

You can kind of see the scuzz (feel free to start using that word. You can apply it to people as well.) on the top of it, especially on the left side.

2. Now, in the original instructions there is nothing about primer. I though this was a little odd but figured maybe there was something different about painting on coffee tables so they don't need primer.Right? I think I did about five layers of paint on the legs. I swear I had a picture of it, but I can't find it now. Oh well. 

3. By approximately day 8 I was ready to start Mod Podging the book pages on. Why yes, I left the coffee table outside the whole time. It was kind of windy, and dirt blows around our yard like no other, so I basically painted over little bits of dirt. Oh, and the bristles were falling out of the cheap brush I used. Fuck, I should not be refinishing furniture. It gives the table texture or something.  

4. Somewhere around day 12 it rained on my table. I had been good about covering it up with a tarp, (which I had once accidentally run over with the lawn mower so one corner of it is shredded up) but I forgot to was too lazy that night. I was already in my pajamas when the weatherman said we had a 20% chance of rain, and I didn't want to get off the couch, so I decided to take my chances. The next day I had to scrape the wet, goopy pages off the top of the table.

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5. Day 13 or so I decided to just paint the top the same color as the rest of the table, but having learned from my mistake of not using primer, I also bought some spray primer. And apparently spray primer comes in colors other than white. Who knew? Apparently any good crafter, that's who. So I picked up some grey primer. Big whoop. The primer would help somehow, and I'd need less coats of paint, right? Wrong again. Shocking. The paint wasn't very even, and the table was a whole lot of yellow. It looked like the sun. I like the sun well enough, but I didn't want to look at it in my living room every day.

6. Blah, blah, blah, a month or so later I finally finished the fucking coffee table. I had the brilliant (seriously, I was so proud of myself I would get a craft high when I thought about it) idea to cover the top of the coffee table in homemade chalkboard paint! Awww, E. could learn her ABCs on the table (or Leapster, whatever)! The mister and I could play rousing games of Tic Tac Toe--cat game again! Har har har!--whilst watching wholesome television programming. The table is actually chalkboardish in that we can draw on it with chalk; however, I think I used too much grout to paint. Basically to make chalkboard paint you mix unsanded grout with the paint of your choice. I swear I saw one site that had a 1-to-1 ratio, but of course I can't find it now. Washington Apples. This was super thick, like I could only do barely two coats thick. So, I think if you do this fucking awesome project you should do less than 1:1.

7. Coffee table finally finished approximately December 23rd. Time for the unveil! I rolled this beauty into our back room aka Bananas Room, aka living room, while my husband was at work. I couldn't wait for him to get home from work to show him the awesomeness I had created! I chose a grey color for the top. I thought it complemented the yellow well, though my matching skillz are teh suck. Ta da!

The mister hates it. HATES. He said it should be in our daughter's (non-existent) playroom. My bad? Gah, I hate that saying so much. "Whoops, my bad? Teeheehee!" HATE.

However, the day after Christmas he got up at 5:30 to go purchase this:

So, which would you rather have in your house? Yeah, probably the Santa.

Motivation, Shmotivation

So apparently I greatly overestimated my enthusiasm for blogging. This happens with pretty much everything I do. Earlier today my husband asked how my Brazil Butt Lift DVDs were working out for me. The ones I just haaaad to buy last May for my saggy, misshapen, 30-something-year-old mom butt.  Well, I did them for about a week before giving up. Our DVD player stopped working so I had to play them through the computer and then hook it up to the TV. That got old after a few days, and I didn't touch them again for another four months. It was then that I discovered I had left one of the DVDs in our computer, which had been sent in for repairs. Whoops. To their credit, they did send the missing DVD back to us, probably after a good laugh. Now if only I could find the motivation to start up again. I've told a friend that I'll do mini-triathlon with her in May, so that might light a fire. Yep, despite the fact that I haven't ridden a bike since I was about 12, I haaaate running, and I can't remember the last time I swam, let alone in an alligator-infested lake, I've decided a mini-tri would be awesome! I've told my husband I'm doing it, so I have to at least make an effort. Next week I'm downloading Couch to 5k. Maybe the week after that I'll start researching "running" (who am I kidding, they will mostly be used for walking) shoes....

I did find some time to work on my crocheted blanket I've been working on for officially over a year now. I think I added about three rows to it. Huzzah!  My mom was in town for a week at the beginning of December, and then I was busy doing...stuff. Really, I'm not sure what I've been doing for the last month-ish. I did see Eddie Vedder in concert two nights in a row, which was pretty much the best Christmas/birthday/Labor Day present a girl could ever give herself. Seriously. That man is amazing.

One thing I wasn't doing last month (besides blogging) was coming up with clever predicaments for an elf who is supposed to sit on a shelf. Oh my gosh, do y'all (I'm probably wrongfully assuming more than one person reads this) have friends who do this for their kids?! My Facebook feed was clogged with pictures of the footless elves with beady little eyes doing such wacky things as lounging in a bowl of marshmallows, fishing, and finding himself taped to the bathroom mirror by some dastardly superheroes. At least my friends seemed to be fairly tame with their elf antics. I don't think I saw one elf  "poop" out peppermints, so there's that.

Dear Lord, my husband and I can't remember to get the mail every day. There's no way we'd remember to move an elf every night for a month. And then I'd have to make him "do" something? And then clean up after him? For 24  nights in a row, or however long it is the elf hangs around? In the words of E., "No thank you." In the words of me, "Fuck no." And I'd have to remember he's "real?" This is a recipe for disaster. I almost gave the elf away the night after Christmas. We were having dinner with some friends and their kids were talking about their elf. I said to the mom, in front of the kids, "Yeah, there's no way we could keep up with an elf and make him do stuff every night...um, I mean...," as she shot me death glares. "These fried pickles are really good, aren't they kids?" Super awkward.

One thing I did do, besides sit on my ass and dream of the cool felt coasters I was going to make but never did, was paint our coffee table. Our old one was a piece of crap. We were actually paid to take it from a furniture store. True story. We had bought a couch from said store, and then a couple days later I noticed the couch was on a sale and you got a free coffee table or ottoman. Woo! I called the store, they gave us the coffee table, and then refunded us the difference of the sale price. Now, shockingly the table was not of the best craftsmanship, and it was starting to get kind of scuzzy looking with odd, filmy blotches on it. I was going to search Craigslist for one, but then that little crafty light bulb went off in my head. I decided to paint it. And best of all, I promised my husband it would cost us less than five dollars. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I'll upload the pictures tomorrow next week of my coffee table project because I've got some Downton Abbey to catch up on. And my husband made me a Washington Apple or three. Cheers!