We are first-time homeowners making our house into a home and one of the first easy projects we wanted to tackle was making a happy entrance. There were two things I wanted to do, the first on the outside of our house and the second just on the inside of our house.

The first was to make our house numbers and mailbox a bit happier. How does one make an inanimate object happy? Easy: by adding neon!

I took not-so-clean bronzed house numbers and mailbox, cleaned them up with a paste made from baking soda and water, dried them and then had some fun with spray paint. I liked the way the bronze looked in the first place, so I spray painted the numbers and the outside of the mailbox bronze, essentially bringing them back to what I assume they looked like when they were new. And then, borrowing from an idea I saw on Pinterest, I spray painted the inside of the mailbox a neon green. Now that is a happy color!

And then for the foyer, where there is no coat closet, I wanted a coat rack that said more than, “Put coats here.” How does a coat rack talk, one may ask. Truth be told, most don’t, but this one does! Red squiggles hanging on a wall just scream at you to smile. For an extra touch of decor, I added a 1920s-era straw hat, which was one of the decorations from our wedding.

Neon green mailbox + red squiggle coat rack = a happy entrance! 🙂