Patio Furniture, Cushions, Personalized Doormats

Our doormats page has been updated. Found some funny doormats (”Nice Underwear” is good for a giggle), some pretty doormats (direct printing does wonders with flowers galor), and some unique doormats (a NYC manhole cover looking doormat anyone?).

April showers bring mud in the house. It’s a great thing to teach your kids to wipe their feet on the doormat before entering a home. First, though, you need a doormat!

As the grey still hangs on, and some folks even battle shoveling snow, the gardener begins to dream of spring. The seed catalogs have already arrived, been thumbed through, lists of seeds made, the vegetable garden for Spring/Summer 2005 all mapped out. A list of any tools that need replacing is already clipped to the garden plan. What else can we do on these long winter nights that are already getting shorter?

Dream of how to enjoy the garden greenery once it arrives! Dream of lazy afternoons in the garden with the laptop connected via wireless to the blog, ahhhhh. Add a mint julip sitting icily nearby… sitting where?

Sitting on your gorgeus all-in-one garden arbor with swing!

Garden Arbor Swing Set

Quality Western Red Cedar kiln dried, then oil stain treated for lasting charm and endurance, this piece is a real dream come true.

Plan around a garden arbor!

• For lazy afternoons, place your garden arbor in a spot that will be shady. Buy and plant flowers that will do well in semi-shade so that your arbor is well decorated with nature’s gift of abundance. Scented geraniums are fantastic for such a spot. You’ll have delicious scents wafting on the breeze, delicate blooms to contemplate, and they’re easy to care for, too!
• Plan to face your garden arbor in the direction of a well orchestrated show of flowers in your yard. While you will want your seat in the shade, you can view the glory of your jasmine vine climbing the garden wall, your sunflower patch nodding gracefully in the breeze, or put in your direct line of site some garden fountains and ponds. A simple fountain in the sun will relax you and add the cooling sound of running water.
• Get a Brinkman Gas Grill or Smoker and cook out from the comfort of your arbor swing! Take full advantage of your summer evenings and cook outdoors, making your garden arbor the center of attraction.

This and other garden arbor swings can be compared on our Garden Arbors page.

And while the rain, snow, and grey still persists, get a personalized doormat to keep the mud where it belongs: waiting for spring in the garden!

Winter weather means mud on shoes. A proper doormat helps keep the mud out, the warmth in, and makes a statement.

Personalized coir doormats allow you to express yourself while wiping your boots. Made of natural fibers, from the coconut tree, these doormats are ecological, economical, and good looking, too.

Doormats greet your family and friends before you even open the door.

Keep it cheery in the dreary weather, keep your home cleaner with someplace to wipe shoes and boots, and add some new character with a personalized doormat.

There are several main materials for doormats: rubber, cast aluminum (or iron, but iron is more prone to rust), wood, sisal, and coir (coconut fibers). Each one has advantages for different doormat needs. Many of the decorative styles of doormats are really miniature carpets with a rubber backing.

There are some sites on the internet that discuss making your own personalized doormat:

• Do it yourself Spray-Painting a Sisal Doormat — This article is well set out and tells you how to make a lattice pattern on a simple sisal doormat. This looks like it could be done on a coir mat as well. The stencil method is used.
• DIY craft welcome mat — This article takes a sisal mat and shows you how to decorate it with felt strips for a welcome message.
• DIY Floor Mats — This article also stresses stencil methods on natural fiber mats of jute or sisal or grass.
• So you say you want a revolution doormat? — More stencil doormat ideas for a coconut doormat. Not as thorough pictorial coverage, but some more specifics on paints to try.
• Painted Welcome Mat — Acrylic paints, spray varnish, and optional rubber stamps are used in this welcome mat construction. The rubber stamp idea is a great help for those of us who can’t draw or cut out stencils with any skill whatsoever.

After reading up on doormats, making your own doormats, and what’s available commercially online, it became interesting to look for ink sublimation personalized doormats. After all, you can upload images to places like cafepress.com and have a mug or a t-shirt printed, why not a doormat?

Most of the custom personalized doormats available are customizable with your name or a text message, not your own image. There are lovely models available, like this cool pineapple personalized arch doormat:

The cool thing about the pineapple motif is that you can get all sorts of other outdoor decor in pineapple motif, also. Like pineapple welcome plaque:



and pineapple weathervane:


and a bunch more stuff.

But nobody seems to be offering an “upload your image and print your own doormat” service yet.
The closest thing seems to be Empirescreen.com which offers dye sublimation printing on doormats. You can email in your graphic file or even send it in on disk. While not quite as immediately gratifying as uploading your image and ordering already, it just might do.

So don’t have a boring doormat this winter, buy or make something exciting, personal, custom, and cool! Think of someone whose face you’d like to wipe mud on every day! Your mother-in-law, your boss, your ex-husband? They’ll think you’re flattering them with a personalized doormat, while you walk all over them every day. The possibilities are endless.