Easy Papasan Footstool Makeover

My sister got me this stool along with a used papasan on Craigslist. I loved them—until my cats took over them and made them furry. Unfortunately, washing only made them faded, but doesn't get rid of the furry. So after reading and pinning a bunch of DIY painting tutorials, I've decided I'll give these a makeover. I started with the footstool first just in case I mess up.

Lo and behold: the old footstool. It's lumpy. It's hairy. It's gross.



This is made out of wicker, so I gently sanded it down and wiped with a dry paper towel.



Then I sprayed two coats of Rust-oleum Flat White Paint and Primer. Easy breezy ...



I didn't like the cushion AT ALL and had a brilliant idea to replace it with a pillow. Okay maybe not so brilliant, but still cheaper than a real footstool cushion, and wayyy prettier. Finding the cushion proved to be more difficult. I went to two Burlington Coat Factory and a Ross before I stumbled on something I absolutely love. Plus, I didn't have food all day long so I was miserable by the time I found this pillow.

Cushion. Turquoise. Pillow section. 16 inches diameter (I measured the footstool before going to the store). $11.



Just place the pillow on top and voila. Done. Ten times better than the old footstool and takes minimum effort (except for finding the pillow).



Remember to pin this post :)

Valentine Day

This year we decided to make sushi! The whole experience was very fun. We had so much sashimi that it wasn't even funny.

We made tempura of cucumber, onion, avocado, zucchini, and shrimp. It was a lot of deep-frying. I will not be deep-frying anything for a long time from now.

We splurged a little and got day-caught scallops. They were so fresh and rich. I could never imagine how buttery and rich scallops can get. I made a garlic and sesame dressing to go with the scallops.

This was our first time rolling a sushi roll ever in our lives. We made a spicy scallop roll with strips of cucumber. It was a lot harder than we imagined.


Spicy scallop roll cut and plated.

Next up, we had the salmon and tuna roll with cucumber and cilantro.

Then we made our last and final roll which was the "Dragon" roll.

The rest were all salmon and tuna sashimi.

The meal was very satisfying. For something so simple looking as sashimi and sushi, the process of preparing it with care was quite difficult. I think I'll leave sushi rolling up to the professionals from now on. However, I will continue to eat slabs after slabs of sashimi by myself.

Chalk Wall - It Makes Writing on Walls OK

My sister has this room which was painted pink. It wasn't an ugly pink. It was just pink. She wanted to use it as a working studio or a craft room of some sort. She made the mistake of asking me for ideas on what to do with the walls. I said: LET'S MAKE ONE OF THE WALLS A CHALKBOARD!

Yay, right? Wrong! I mean, we didn't think it was wrong at first. We said: Whoo, that's awesome! Let's go pick an awesome color! And so we did. We picked an awesome grey color that would go great with the floor. But then things got tricky. Really tricky. The existing wall was texturized. We can't have a textured chalkboard! Nooooo. So my sister was the hero. She got a sander and she sanded that shit down. I think her lungs' lives just got shortened by a good 10 years due to inhalation of paint/wall dust. Oh, I forgot about lead poisoning, too. Oh man! My sister has stories on how much she suffered for that wall that could keep a whole weekend by the campfire entertaining.

Since I've always been a lazy butt, I only help out with the easy stuff like putting paint on the already sanded and primed wall.

Ah, this was the fun part. We had to mix non-sanded grout in with the paint so that chalk would later be erasable. Fun, no? Well, we um... didn't have a paint mixer and were too lazy to walk over to our parents' place to grab the drill...so my genius sister created this contraption.

Et, voila! Sticks taped to the stand mixer. It didn't work super well because the sticks were too skinny, so we switched it over to spoons later on.

We succeeded in mixing it enough that there were minimal chunks of grout in the paint. Then we painted a beautiful wall which we had to destroy immediately by smearing it with chalk. Why? Because someone told us that the chalk wouldn't erase easily if we didn't prime the wall first with chalk. So, we primed it with chalks.

This part was actually really fun. Destroying something so beautiful was fun.

We took a break to draw a kitty!

We even took a break to take this picture of me standing in front of pain and destruction!

Once the wall was completely covered in chalk, we had to wipe that stuff down so it would be nice and clean to use. This wasn't very fun.

Oh yes, we used it and it was AWESOME SAUCE!