Barnaclebutt

I've been loving this blog Nesting Place, ever since I found it a couple of weeks ago. And by "loving" I mean cruising through old posts for minutes and minutes instead of making my bed or dumb things like that.

The Nester has a motto that I am so inspired by, "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful." I've known this intuitively for years; my life, budget, children, not to mention my temperament and short attention span make "perfect" the same as "impossible."

Cooking and entertaining have always delighted me, but to throw those big ole' dinner parties I've definitely had to embrace the idea that my shin digs did NOT need to be perfect to be wonderful. I've preached this to lots of my friends, and I'm excited to let the same concept spill over into my (admittedly stunted) interior life.

SO...I did a table makeover inspired by The Nester (click that link so you can see what I was trying to do). Seriously, I just tried to copy her as much as I could without buying anything and only shopping my own house. When I saw the picture of the table she decorated I got so excited because I have one that looked a lot like it sitting at the top of my stairs. Our house is two stories, but you come UP to the main living areas so this is the second thing you see when you enter our home. The entry way is the first thing, and I have big plans for that little project too.

Okay, so, here's the before picture:

Kind of anemic, right?

So I got to work trying to copy the Nester. I tried taking down my painting and leaning it but since you view this table from down low as you come up the stairs, it needed something high on the wall. I decided to hang it a little higher, and then add some leaning pictures below it. I had some frames with pictures of my girls in them living in the entryway closet (what, you don't keep your old pictures there?) so I decided to pillage them.

The Nester said to use black and white prints. Don't have those so I went with this great photo of my Mom and Dad taken 30 years ago that has rested in the drawer of my coffee table for many moons. I've never actually had it up, but I think it is so cute!

I wanted to layer my pictures (like The Nester said) so I brainstormed how I could get a free print. I considered printing something off of the internet or painting my own but then had the, fabulous I think, idea of cutting some pictures out of a book I got from the discount book section at Barns and Noble, like 7 years ago called "The Pressed Plant."That came out good didn't it? It's actually two pages taped together but, wait for it, "it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful!"

The Nester also suggested using a tray and a sphere for visual interest. I have a silver tray in desperate need of polishing, but no polish. I used it anyway because I figured it would just tarnish again anyway and let's face it, I won't keep it polished. I tried all kinds of things for a sphere and finally settled on this glass paper weight with a little silver plate I had from a thrift store under it.

Arranging the small stuff proved to be the hardest for me.