Be it ever so humble...

My Mother-in-Law once shared with me that the secret to impressing guests with your house is to clean your front door. If your front door sparkles you don't have to do nearly as much work inside because your guest already thinks you are an immaculate housekeeper. I thought this was pretty good advice, and I have tried to follow it. It worked especially well in our house because our door is the most beautiful color of brown and really compliments the Texas limestone exterior. It is this really dark dark dark brown (some, Ralphie, would call it black- but I would call her wrong. It's dark dark dark beautiful brown). I have always been proud of our front door.
Cue the dogs. They got out (again) a couple of weeks ago. I have given up running around half-clad looking for them when they run away. I figure they will either come back or if they get lost they deserve whatever happened to them. So I saved myself the trouble of prancing around in my robe chasing the gruesome twosome. They did come back. They came back while I was doing something else that required my attention. So they scratched on the door. When I went to go get them there was a chip of paint off of my beautiful door. Dang dogs. Oh well. Brought them inside and didn't think much of it.

Well day turns to night and night turns to day and three days later that chip of paint is a full blown disaster. It kept chipping away and away. Since my Mother-in-Law was coming soon I figured I ought to repair the paint chip, because she said that thing about front doors, you know?

And now I would like to just send a shout out to all of my "you can do anything" friends. I can't. I shouldn't. Please quit inspiring me to attempt projects that are way beyond the scope of my ability. My friends (yes I mean you Ralphie, Meleah, Janssen, Jamie, Laurie, Stef, Kayla, anyone reading this) are really good at fixing things and making things beautiful. Homemakers in the very sense of the word. They are so good and make it look so easy that I find myself thinking that I could just about do anything. I love my friends and I want to impress them with my skills, so I try to do the things they do and it just does not work.

To give you a sense at how incapable I am; I spent a good twenty minutes staring at paint cans before I figured out that you had to ask the guy to add the color in for you. My mental conversation went something like....
"Hmmm, I would like my door to still be brown, let's see here.......okay they've got white......eggshell......neutral white...........pure white.........ultra white..........crest white strip white........heaven white..........hm I wonder where all the other colors are.......maybe they are behind all of these variations of white (commence the removing of the first layer of paint cans).......this is so weird, am I just like in the white section or something? This is Home Depot for crying out loud.....HOME DEPOT, you'd think they would have more than just dang white. I don't want a white door".

It took a long ol' while before I figured out they made your color right there for you. I mean I knew they did that for, like, picky people, I just wanted a dang can of paint. Anyway, my head nearly imploded when I saw all of my choices. I made a choice. Chocolate sparkle.

I don't know how to paint. Blaine does not know how to paint. I figured I would need to get the old paint off the door; but did anyone bother to tell me there was such a thing as paint stripper? No. Did I attack my door with a credit card and steak knife? Yes. Does it look like Edward Scissorhands locked himself out of my house? Yes.

This is what my door looked like after two days of "paint stripping" Kristi style. Nothing says welcome to our home like.....

Houston, we have a problem. Mother-in-Law is coming in 48 hours ( or at least she was when the door looked like this). It looks a little worse than just a small chip in the bottom of the door doesn't it?

I need to find a hobby or something I am really really good at before I let this whole "I ruined my front door and can't help but be embarrassed anytime anyone sees it" thing gets to my self esteem.

Help.

P.S. I knew you would want to see pictures of me doing this, but I couldn't take them. It was extra bad because I didn't like have a gas mask or whatever you are supposed to wear when ruining your front door, so I was wearing Gwen's Dora sunglasses (instead of safety goggles) and had a white handkerchief tied around my mouth and nose. It was really quite the most humiliating thing to be out there demolishing the doors. There goes the neighborhood. Why couldn't it have been my back door?