Rugs Bloom In This Heat

When it is hotter than can be believed outside, I hide. While hiding I: read extra, drink inordinate amounts of seltzer with ice and re-discover all the little projects I wanted to accomplish in our house. I have been painting trim like mad and spackling little dings and holes and nail pokes in all the walls. I established a secure relationship with our drill (I can now drill in and reverse out all screws with straight confidence...no fear). I made and hung tissue flowers from the dining room ceiling and then got all inspired and re-organized the pantry. But sometimes the best projects come on you in a fit of random inspiration....

One very lazy day I began to doodle on a plain green carpet I'd picked up at a local tag sale and the paint and doodling just kept on creeping along. Pretty soon there was a long trailing bloom explosion expanding pinkly from one corner of the plain, faded green. I passed through several stages of terrified and exhilerated while painting...worrying by turns that I was destroying the rug or exulting over having really *made* the rug work. I love it. Sometimes you just have to take leaps and do crazy random things because the spirit moved you, urges can be genius.

When in Doubt, Copy Your Sister!

Look what I did today! Woohoo!!!!

I've been wanting an area rug for the dining room for a long time. Rugs have such a great way of completing a room and designating spaces and making everything look all legitimate. They are perhaps my greatest interior decorating discovery yet. (Yes, I am in the early stages.) But, yes, let's do be honest, shall we? My dining room floor is horrific...not even sort of the place for a rug. I am wretched about cleaning up the floors after meals. They really get gross. I don't know how I'd ever manage in a house with carpet under the dining room table. My mother-in-law is awe-inspiring in this category...all busily down there on her hands and knees picking up each crumb my kids tossed overboard during the meal.

Right. So, after I established that there was no way a rug was happening...I mourned it and lived with the room feeling bareish for about a year. But did I give up? No! I hatched a somewhat crazy plan. See, my kid sister, Foxy had done this wonderful floor stencil in her dining room and it made my jaw drop. A "rug" that was stenciled onto fairly unfinished wood floors that we have for which there are no terribly concrete plans regarding their shining refinished future. Heh. It's pretty cheap and brilliantly simple. I had a can of white paint around for painting all the trim the house and I just dipped into that. It took hardly any volume to paint this pattern. I bought one plastic stencil on Etsy, I picked a somewhat complicated damask design which meant that I could cherry pick it apart and selectively stencil little bits here and there to make the rug design look more diverse.

And I love it! I know it will get grubby and eventually fade and be scuffed and scratched but as you can see by I'm not really going for a perfect look, I am thinking more old farmhouse, romantic/rustic than upscale. And eventually I expect we'll sand it off in favor of those shining floors and then I'll be back to the same old problem.

But for now...I love my new lacy rug.

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