Blue Monday!

Hi everyone! I haven't posted a new post for awhile! Was busy, nothing to show off and my whole household was wiped out last week with the stomach flu!! So now I'm trying to get back in to the swing of things again! Don't have anything for Met Monday yet but I can post some pretty pics for Blue Monday! Sally over at http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/ hosts this fun event so I hope you'll go over and check out her blog and all the other blue posters!

Today, I would like to share with you my handpainted kitchen table. This particular antique oak pedastal table was given to my husband by his mother before we got married. It, in turn, had belonged to her aunt...so it is a family heirloom! Those of you who are familiar with my kitchen know that when I redecorated it I went sort of "wild" with wildlife! From stencils to stickers to rub-ons, if it's a flower, bird or bug it's on my kitchen walls! Well, the time had come when the top of our kitchen table needed refinishing again, but I had always had in my mind an idea to paint the top of it and so.. I did!!!! Then my husband comes home as I'm finishing up and has a conniption fit! Is that how you spell that?! Don't know if your DH's are like mine but it is sacreligious to paint over finished wood in his eyes! But being the selfish, if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, female I sometimes can be....Yes, it's true! I'm not the perfect little homemaker you all think I am..you do don't you?! anyway..I didn't care that he didn't like it! So there! And I have loved this table ever since! And guess what? His parent's love it too! Maybe one day he'll get over it...I do seem to notice that when he cleans his guns he just puts paper down and not a vinyl cloth to keep those caustic cleaners from eating away at my paint job....could he be trying to slowly but surely sabotage my lovely creation? Hmmmmmm!

I did use a stencil for my wrens. Yes, I cheated! I never said I was a Rembrandt! I mean for gosh sakes I have stickers on my walls because I can't paint the butterflies myself! But the really creative part that I am rather proud of is that I just used the stencil for the basic body shape and then handpainted the birds myself! The same with the nest and the eggs. The tree branches and leaves are all mine! I even think the bird stencil was actually a finch but we have a family of wrens that have been here since we moved in 16 years ago so I really wanted the birds on my tabletop to be wrens. The background is a light yellow that I brushed over the top and then dry brushed the sky blue over that! The branches go all the way around the edge of the table!

In the garden world purple flowers are sometimes called blue because blue is such a hard color to find in flowers. There is blue salvia and of course the beautiful blue delphinium that i can't grow down here in the south because it's just too hot for those gorgeous blooms! So even though my clematis is purple and white we will call it blue just for today! I just had to take pictures of my clematis so full of blooms! It's trained on the wrought iron fence we have around our pool! In the summer it will start losing leaves and not blooming much at all but right now it's absolutely gorgeous! Enjoy! and I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Lauralu :)