Remember life before Pinterest? Back in the stone ages when we actually had to bookmark webpages or even (gasp!) print out ideas and put them in an “ideas” notebook? Okay, I might have been the only nerd with a notebook! Way back in 2008 I came across an article in the New York Times that featured Pamela Bell’s home and a couch that she let her kids color all over, and I immediately printed out the page and put it in my “Must Try This One Day” notebook!
Then the other day I was debating about putting a drab cream fabric chair out with the garbage, and I remembered THE COUCH. So I picked up some Crayola bright fabric markers at Target and got to it. A friend gave me the chair (I think it was originally from Stein Mart) when I moved into my first apartment 7 years ago. It had a weird skirt that I never really liked and is so not my style, but somehow it’s survived in our house this long. It’s a sneaky chair that hid in corners really well and just blended in with it’s surroundings. The first thing I did was remove the skirt. It required pliers and resulted in a gash in my hand and an ugly cut in my forearm. Yikes! After that I just started coloring. Anderson and Kingston contributed to the masterpiece too. One of them really likes coloring on furniture, so I knew this would be a fun group project! I wrote some of my favorite Kingston quotes on it and put the date on one of the legs, because I want to remember that this was our life in 2013. Let’s be honest, depending our your decorating style you might think this is more of a chair make-under than a makeover, but I love it! And it fits in with our “anything goes” style.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this year it’s that life is short. So why not color on that old chair? If nothing else it will be a great conversation piece! And if it turns out bad you can just put it out by the garbage. Who cares? I like taking risks, and those projects usually turn out to be my favorites!
