Good morning! Today, I want to share the fun and easy results of using what you got. Our apartment is a little wonky, including a sort of inexplicable fire door that separates the front of the house from the back of the house.

A few months ago, we realized it was magnetic. Or actually, we had always known it was magnetic, but a few months ago, I put the kids' alphabet and other magnets here to play with. The fridge is often used for such purposes, of course, but our door is the only surface of the fridge that's available, and the thing is, when I'm setting the kids up to do something low-key and easily monitor-able like this, it's often because I'm cooking and actually need to use the fridge. They really like having the magnets right here, but of course, I wanted a tidy place to store those magnets when I didn't want them splashed all over the door.

Enter more magnets. I had purchased six of these magnets from Amazon a while back to use in Lou's room. (She has a locker storage set, and I made pretty heavy use of its magnetic sides by hanging baskets to hold art supplies, books and play kitchen gear). It occurred to me that they would be really useful out here. So out they came, and I paired them with three baskets I bought at Target maybe 7 years ago. Yes, there are only two pictured here, but there are three total, to hold overflow magnets, a few little toys for the family room, and stuff to put away. The "put away" basket is our equivalent of a stair basket in a bigger home: a place to dump things that get left out here during nap and bedtimes.

First come baskets, then come labels...

...then comes a completely unnecessary craft project! I was loving how the door was functioning with the baskets, but it's such a big blank canvas that I thought I wanted to spruce it up a bit. First, I got a jolt of inspiration on the blog House Tweaking, by Dana Miller, which, if you don't read, I beg you not to. You'll immediately see that I'm a low-rent version of her, and you'll never come back. But anyway, Dana had realized that photo magnets worked well on her magnetic-painted wall (when that magnetic paint had proven disappointing for other types of magnets, for her and for me, repeatedly). I loved the idea of adding some photos that the kids could interact with on the door, so I did a little research and ended up using a company called Sticky 9 to make us nine magnets from photos I uploaded.

They're pretty cool. I love how the prints turned out - matte, and in a lovely size. I am also thrilled that the company has made production and shipping carbon neutral. Hooray! That said, I am a little disappointed in the actual strength of the magnetic backing. You can see how the pictures are not quite smoothly attaching to the door, which is itself a strong magnet, so that's a bummer. But still, overall awesome purchase, and now I want more. I'm not sure if I should go with Sticky 9 again for consistency, or try another company to see if I'm happier with the magnets. If you've had these made and are thrilled with your company, let me know!

So, I could have left it there. I mean, it was cute. Nice baskets. Nice pics. Happy magnetic play in progress.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the bright primary colors these Melissa and Doug letters and numbers come in. But a couple of the numbers had actually lost their shiny colorful layer, and it turned out that both Lou and I loooooved how they looked with the unfinished wood underneath.

It turned out that these numbers had a top layer that was super easy to peel off, thusly:

So we got super excited. Lou calls them her graham cracker numbers, because they look like graham crackers. I'm not that sure. But when we went to apply the same treatment to the letters, we were brutally rebuffed. 

You can see the difference; instead of peeling of a free-standing layer and revealing a nice wooden, non-sticky layer, all that was revealed when we tried to peel the colorful fronts the letters was that maddening white-paper residue. Clearly, I wasn't going to let that stand. Nor, at this point, could I let the primary colors compete with my gorgeous wooden numbers. So I set about revamping the letters by recovering them.

I wasn't sure what would be best, and after several trips to several different craft stores, I came home with this stuff: Duck Tape washi tape in gold and mustard, Duck Tape chalkboard tape, a Memorulle from Flying Tiger (similar), and a roll of wood veneer tape from my local art store (similar).

Then, I just covered the letters, and used nail scissors, regular scissors and a small X-Acto knife to neatly trim to fit. I mostly stuck with the black tape, because I think it looks great, but I also tried each of the other options. My favorite runner up was the wooden tape; I found the other Washi tapes weren't thick enough to really cover the bright color underneath. But overall: they look smashing.

And really, so does the whole door. I love that I actually find it nice to look at now, instead of this weird eye sore. And it's the perfect place for Lou and West to play where I can keep an eye on them -- this view is pretty much where I stand when prepping meals -- that doesn't involve decimating my carefully organized Tupperware drawer or getting pink chalk all over everything. Those are both fine options, too, but it's nice to have a third.

What do you think? Have I jumped the shark, craft-wise? Maybe. But you have to admit, they look awesome. And I'm not the first person to revamp magnetic letters; spray-painted versions are all over the Blogosphere. I didn't want to use spray paint because these still wind up in West's mouth too often, but that is certainly a slightly less-intense option. It wasn't even that bad though; by the time Bret had caught me up on the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, I was done. (Yes, verbally, Bret told me about what's going in GoT. I refuse to watch it anymore, because I can't deal with the violence, but I know the characters and read the books, and Bret's dying for someone to discuss it with...so that's what we did last night. Pretty romantic). 

What do you think? If you have Insta magnets and love 'em, please holla in the comments. If you have made over a child's toy for your own aesthetic pleasure, please show your support. We can't be silent majority any longer!

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