Paint it Black

Okay, Interweb, I am posting this because I have worked all day to disassemble, paint and then reassemble these two (previously Kelly green) lanterns from Ikea and, while I love my 'hood, I have no illusions about my 'hood. In short, I am not sure how long these lovelies will actually last... At the very least, I figure I am going to be replacing the pristinely beautiful, creamy white pillar candles sometime soon-ish. It is with no fondness at all that I recall our first summer here and the Evil Begonia Thief who, with surgical precision, extracted one of my pricey (but gorgeous!) orange begonia plants from one of the window boxes on my porch railing...

This year, I decided not to go with hanging baskets on the curvaceous iron hooks (that I risked a return to singledom for when I forced M to hang them for me two years ago) on either side of our front steps. I can never find baskets I like, I hate transplanting them from the cheap, hideous, white plastic, eye-offending pots they sell them in to the more aesthetically-pleasing and visually harmonious black wire hangers I have. No matter what I plant, it dies (because I am a lousy gardener) and all the dirt runs out everywhere when I water them, and a whole series of other whiny reasons to opt out of hanging baskets.

Lying awake, night after night, tortured by the design dilemma before me, I finally had an epiphany: LANTERNS. I have been craving big, rectangular lanterns but have had NO REASON to buy them. Suddenly, it all became clear: I would get (two!) such lanterns to hang over our new, sleek black planters on either side of the porch. They would look elegant. They would make me feel happy every time I approached the house. They would be welcoming when our (imaginary) guests arrived to attend our many (imaginary) dinner parties. Perhaps, just perhaps, they would distract passersby from the scraggly, Sanford & Son-esque field of dandelions that passes for our front lawn... They would, in short, be perfect.

But where to find these elusive epitomes of front porch elegance? A girl on a budget knows that the rich folk scamper off to Angus & Co, or Elte, or UpCountry Garden and, with a flash of their gold cards from within their Louis Vuitton or Birkin bags, find themselves in possession of (two!) $300 lanterns before you can say, "I'd like a grande skinny latte to go with my Lululemons," but such was not to be for a bargain-savvy downtowner like me. And it was important that the SCALE of the lanterns be right: no dinky, too-small lanterns would do. And so, off to Ikea, Swedish for "I'm no Lululemon-wearing fashion victim sucker with a bottomless decorating budget," where I discovered the cheekily-named Sommar line of goodies for cheapskates like me. Among said goodies was the perfect lantern.

In Kelly green, dingy white or galvanized tin.

NOT GOOD.

BUT, never fear: one too-small slipcover returned for incredibly small, 1/3 of the original price, credit note later, and I was whisking off with my two Kelly green lanterns, on my way to Crappy Tire for two cans of spray paint, and back home again in a jiffy. MacGyvering the glass out of the lanterns, I headed for the paint cans and, one afternoon and a whole lotta spraypaint on my feet and inhaled up my nose later, I have (two!) sleek black lanterns of JUST THE TYPE I had envisioned!

I have zip-tied them to the curvaceous hooks, optimistically (& foolhardily) styled them with lovely pillar candles and, lastly, written this long, dull-ish post as an homage to their beauty (as long as you don't get tooooooooooo close to them, anyway.....) so that, when the maruading crack addicts or the Begonia Thief Redux decide that THEY want my perfect black lanterns, there is some record of their fleeting perfection.