Magnets: Scrabble, Polaroids, and piranha plants

The magnets on my fridge were really easy to do and I get a lot of use out of them.

Remember how bare and desolate my kitchen used to be? It's a really good thing I had fun magnets!

Hide that router

My house is so old (and neglected) that only one phone jack still works. This means I don't have many options for my wifi router. Of course the jack is in the dining room, where there isn't much furniture to hide it.  So I hide my router with a Scrabble board!

Ignore the paint drips ALL OVER. I keep reminding myself that they add character. (Mostly I get mad at the previous tenants and landlords who wrecked so much of the wood trim.)

The legs are leftover from my kitchen island build. 

It's still conspicuous, but I don't mind it so much as I did the bare router.

Repurposing fabric

My favorite thing about my bedroom is that I made so much of it myself. I wanted a variety of patterns in my room, and I've managed to do it all very cheaply. Remember the bed post ceramics?

A few years ago I found a really cool scarf at Goodwill, and I grabbed two. I used one to cover the seat on my occasional chair (also from Goodwill), and used the other on my desk chair. 

Personalized welcome mat

I live in a duplex, and I hate visiting duplexes and not knowing which door to knock on. My solution was to make a cute doormat that would reassure people they were at the right door.

At first I thought I should go full nerd, and I was toying with the line "These are not the droids you're looking for."

I thought it was clever, but the rest of the world did not. I decided to go for something a little more mainstream.

I found a doormat on clearance and painted my initial on it. This took a few tries--at first I made a paper stencil, but it moved around too much. Then I made a stencil from contact paper, but I cut on the wrong side and the M turned out backwards. Finally I made a stencil that stuck and was recognizable. Since my door is under a canopy I don't have to worry about rain, and I just used acrylic paints. I pushed the paint pretty deep into the fiber, and it still looks just as clear and bright as when I made it.