Feel the Love

Last week my husband had a business trip. Caroline and I are never going to turn down an opportunity for fun, so we went and spent a few days with my wonderful sister Lucy and her little girl Penelope. We had such a great time. Once the babies were down at night Lucy and I sat around her kitchen table to paint, give suggestions to each other, tell and retell funny stories and laugh. As we went we even came up with new words such as "crispening." Crispening is when your edges are smudgy and you go back and fix them. Needless to say I crispened greatly with this project.

Before this trip I had initially embarked upon JoAnn to get some wooden frames and spell out "Love" in some pretty computery writing and paint the frames. Alas, there were no cute frames at my local Jo so I found these cute letters and changed course. (Also, I was charged waaaaay to much for them and my money saving coupon only saved me like eight cents. Ugh. I get ripped off at that store way to often, but that's a complaint session for another time). Anyway, I didn't quite have my plan formed for these guys but I knew I wanted something Valentinesy.

Back to Lucy's kitchen, I began sanding off the rough edges and painting them white. In my creative zeal I tried to do checkers and polk-a-dots that ended up looking like 5th grade camp all over again. I confess I did kind of like the symbolism in  the rigidity of the checkers since the other patterns were more whimsical and fun. The squares reminded me of the more blah parts of love. Paying bills together, budgeting when there's not enough money, deciding not to pick a fight when you so want to, you know that side of a relationship that isn't portrayed in any Nicholas Sparks film. At least not the ones I've seen. But either way, it was awful and had to go. And pictured above is what became of the the polk-a-dots that used to be on the "V".

While I was disparaging my work, Lucy shared with me a thought. This thought, I decided, must be stamped on the front door of my brain; so whenever a thought walked in or out I would remember it . This is what she said:

Such wise words! Really, if I am taking so much time, energy and meticulous finger strain to make this, why wouldn't I want it to have my signature? Now don't get me wrong, I don't want it to look like my toddler did it, but not like factory worker #450 did it either. 

So after resanding the uglies and painting afresh I wasn't so annoyed when the stripes weren't pristine.  

After the paint dried (kind of, I was getting tired of the mess) I arranged the letters how I wanted and glued them to my wooden stand. This was an extra piece of moulding given by Lucy's husband  but you could find something equally suitable at the store.

And wa-la! All done. I liked it with the flower topiary idea that I stole from Laura. Yes, my little sign isn't perfect but neither is Love; right ladies? Ha ha! Enjoy creating and don't let your drive for perfection stop you from having a blast.
Love,
Maren