Kitchen Chalkboard Project

Hi guys!

Happy Sunday evening! We hope you all had an amazing summer weekend. We spent our weekend visiting an arts festival, having a movie night in, doing some shopping for the house and working on a couple of home "projects."

I wanted to share our latest project with you all since it was super easy/cheap and made a big difference in our kitchen. Since we are renting, we are very limited on what we can actually do to the house. It's been fun trying to figure new and innovative ways to decorate and not violate our lease.


Here is a picture of what our stove looked like before. Notice the pink laminate behind the stove...UGLY!

I figured that I needed to either take down the laminate or cover it up. I wasn't sure if taking it down would go over so well with the landlord so...it must be covered! Chalkboards seem to be a new trend in home decorating, and we felt it would be the perfect material for our kitchen.

I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of wood for about $5, and cut it to the right dimensions. I then sanded the wood piece and applied a primer. I bought chalkboard paint from Wal-Mart which was also about $5, and painted 2 coats and let it dry for 24 hours. I got some sidewalk chalk from Target which was about $4, and drew a free hand design. We used some industrial strength tape, and there you go! We now have a cute piece of artwork over our stove that we feel will be very useful. We thought it could be used for listing family meals, making a grocery list, etc.

What do you guys think?

xoxoxo-D

Let's see how this goes....

Aloha!
We thought that this blog would be a great place to let everybody know what's going on in our lives and also a great creative output for us. This past year, since the wedding, we have really started to settle in and we are finally starting to think of Hawaii as home (at least for the time being). We have seen/done most of the big and touristy things here on the island and now we are beginning to put some roots down and enjoy the simple things in life.

In the past year we have:
- Moved into a cute 3 bedroom townhouse (rental) in Ewa Beach which is on the west side of Oahu.

- Alex got a job as a graphic designer/sign production and installation guru downtown.
- Darnell is still working as a water scientist at Disney's Aulani Resort.
- Tegan made her grand voyage across the Pacific last November and is loving her new life in Hawaii.

- Celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas in our new house and made enough food for 20 people...both times!
- Been visited by both sets of parents, Gloria (Alex's lil sis),  and Mike (Alex's friend).

- Had a little weekend "getaway" for our 1 year anniversary in the far off land of Honolulu. :)

- Hiked many trails, ate at many restaurants, drank at many bars, snorkeled many reefs etc.

For the future we have been working on:
- Making our home more home-y...lots of projects in the works. Since our house is a rental we have to be creative with what we can do with it.
- Trying to see everything we can on this island.
- Trying to make our house more "green" and live a more eco-friendly lifestyle.
- Trying to set a budget and live more frugal so that we can have more financial security and start working on that "nest egg."
- Planning a trip back home to California in September.
- Continuing to grow together and enjoy each other everyday!

Well I hope you all enjoy this blog. We plan to post about whatever comes to mind so I apologize if this blog is all over the place. This is our first time doing this and it might take a while to get the hang of it.