Letter in a Frame Door Decor, or, Why I Should Stop Being Dumb and Start Decorating

I've been awfully busy lately trying to make our new little apartment feel like home. My husband and I have rented since we've been married, and this whole time, I've been saving all my decorating ideas for when we buy a house. How dumb is that? 

I just recently had the revelation (thanks to Jaime of Crafty, Scrappy, Happy, who does the most amazing job transforming rentals to reflect her style) that not being able to paint walls does not equal not being able to decorate. Makes sense, right? But for some reason I've spent the last 4 years living in what are very obviously student apartments. How about I start living in an apartment that I wouldn't be embarrassed to invite people into? One that actually reflects my personality and style?

So, for my first effort to make this apartment a little less we're-renting-this-dump-so-we-don't-really-care-what-it-looks-like and a little more welcome-to-our-home, the front door seemed like an appropriate place to begin:

 (By the way, nice work guessing what this was from the extreme close-up photo in this post! The winner is definitely Kim who predicted "book letter picture frame wreath"--holy specific guess, Batman! Right on the money!)

Do you ever have one of those projects that ends up coming out 100% absolutely completely in-every-possible-aspect different from how you imagined it? That's this one for me. First I was just going to make a berry wreath, until I remembered that my one attempt at making a wreath in the past led to merciless mocking from my husband (much deserved mocking . . . it was rather stupid-looking) and an inglorious demise in the dumpster. Then I thought I'd make a moss-covered letter B (our last name is Brown; so exciting, right?) until I found the moss at Joann's . . . dude, did you know it's like $7 for a package of moss? Moss! The stuff grows for free on rocks! 

Then I remembered a frame I'd bought at the thrift store ages ago (and to think Jeff tried to talk me into tossing it when we moved . . . for shame!), and painted it red. Then the wooden letters were on sale for $2-3 apiece at Joann, and I tore some pages out of a book I'll (hopefully) never get around to reading, and slapped on a little bunch of rolled flowers that my mom, sister and I made but never used for anything, and voila. Door decor complete. Total project cost . . . maybe $5? $6? Not bad, especially considering I couldn't have even bought a stupid package of stupid moss for that amount.

My sister and I enjoyed a moment of dorky excitement when we noticed that the very first piece of the very first page we tore from the book and mod podged to the letter just happened to say "the letter B" . . . surely the gods were smiling upon this project.

So there you have it--my first project in our new place, hopefully a good start to making this little place feel like home rather than just the apartment.

 And there's the door in all its alphabetical glory for you. And I'll leave it up to you to decide if our door has a bit of a fun house mirror effect, or I truly have one elephant leg.

Linking here!