Spring Spiffery

After I let Easter sneak up on me with nary a nod to seasonal decorating, I decided that it was time to wash the windows, draw up the shades and take a hard look at the spots in our house that were getting a little bedraggled and sad. Let's start at the front door, which got a new doormat from Ballard Designs:

Frenchy and fun with the black planter and wrought iron chair on our little porch. 

Then our "entryway" table got an upgrade.  Here's the before with a makeshift shade on the brass candlestick lamp and the glass compote with bamboo.  More recently I had hammered metal and straw balls in the compote:

New burlap shade and springy boxwood topiary and bird.  Don't quote Portlandia to me again on birds!  I know they're ubiquitous and I just don't care. I like them.

Our dropleaf table got re-tablescaped:
Before

After

And I took this little bookcase that my great-grandfather built for my mother when she was a little girl and gave it new life--with her permission, of course!

You can hardly see it peeking above the bed here in this early photo from our move-in procees, but clearly it fades into the background.

Paint prep

Woah!

Back in place.  I followed in Jenny from Little Green Notebook's footsteps and used Rustoleum's Safety Red.  I love the color so much, I'm going to paint the frame of the Munchkin's chest of drawers the same color with white drawer fronts, like this:

Photo from Little Green Notebook.  This upcoming project will also get me out of any work related to laying sod in the backyard.  That and being 7.5 months pregnant, you know.