our message nook

sneak peek no more, i am here to reveal our weekend project. as you know we rent this house and so what we can do to it is limited. like painting the kitchen cabinets or a full kitchen remodel for that matter is out of the picture right now. but, every once in awhile i come up with a great idea that makes the renting stage of this house a little more bearable. for instance, our message nook. any chance i can get to cover up these brown cabinets, i'm gonna take it. this is where the mister and i make a good team. i get the ideas and he makes them happen for me. here's what we did...

we decided to make the side of the pantry a chalkboard wall. the mister measured, searched the pile of scrap wood on the side of our house, cut, and painted a piece of board with pea pod green chalkboard paint. he then nailed it to the side of the pantry. i felt it needed something more, so we took this thrift store piece, painted it yellow and used it as a border. i think it gives it just what it needed. but, then we needed something to balance it out on the bottom and to hold the chalk. the mister went back out to the pile of scrap wood on the side of the house and whipped up a little box to add below. again, i think it gives it just what it needed.

we got rid of the ugly black cordless phone that was just sitting on the desk and replaced it with this super cool, new red telephone from corelco. i love it! of course, i would've preferred yellow, but it wasn't an option and i searched, but couldn't bring myself to pay $120 for an old phone. so, the red one is fine and it fit the budget at $28. i just recently started collecting random plates for a plate wall and since i don't have many this little wall was perfect for them. i think they all compliment the red phone. i don't know about you, but i have to have a place to hang my keys or i will lose them. i'm not even joking. you can ask my friend sarah. i would go to her house almost everyday, for probably 5 years and everyday i would lose my keys. i'm horrible when it comes to keys (and sunglasses, and cell phones). so, this little key hanger that we spray painted yellow is a sanity saver for me.

the little miss is slightly more obsessed with the red phone than i am. she's been writing phone numbers on the chalkboard wall and then making her phone calls. only to my mom though. so far she has called her to ask her if she wants to be a pumpkin for halloween, to tell her what lalaloopsy she wants for her birthday (omg, she's gonna be 7 in less than a week), and again to see if she needs help making a pumpkin costume. not to mention a couple of prank calls to her here and there as well. i can only imagine what her teenage years are going to bring. holy moly, i'm not looking forward to those phone call days, but hey, least we will have this cool message nook to write down all of her messages right? right.