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If you’ve ever bought any plants for you yard then you probably have a few of these not so attractive black pots stored somewhere in your home.  (You may also have an adorable, although very loud, stubborn and moody toddler, if you do, this post will not help you with that.)

But, if you’re like me, then you have dozens of them (the pots, not toddlers) floating around your garage, shed, basement and attic just waiting to be used because they’re pots and they must be useful for something.  Right?  So you keep them, indefinitely, and you accept more of them from friends and family, who know you like plants, because they can’t bear to throw them out either, but unlike you and me, they don’t want them cluttering up their house. 

Meanwhile you go out and buy similar pots because they’re prettier colors.

Enter the always useful can of spray paint.  You have your choice of any color, and one $4 can will cover a dozen or more pots depending on their size. 

We’ve previously done pink and blue pots for the twins to each have their own flowers, but this year I went bland and got a terra cotta color to match my other pots.

Oh, and one last thought, as far as paint durablity goes, we’ve found that most of our pots look nice for about 3 years before we have to repaint them.

I’m still here.

Admist wrapping paper, paint and fabric and with quite a list of gifts to finish yet today and tomorrow.

But at least I got my favorite gift for Makenna finished.

This dollhouse was mine, and I suppose I’m dating myself, because I bet you can tell it’s from the seventies.  You have to love those rug swatches.

I decided to paint the whole thing pale pink with a tan roof because, well, everything should be pink as far as Makenna is concerned.  And its so much more girly than the charcoal gray and barn red roof that it had when I was little.

The inside is the same color because I decided that rather than me do the decorating,  Makenna can choose the colors and fabric and decorate the whole inside herself.  She loves doing that kind of thing.

This is the furniture for it….a bit of it may have to be redone too.

I’m so excited to give this to her.   I can’t wait to see what she does with the place.  I’ll post photos when she’s done.

Jarod needed some ‘new’ furniture for in his room, and this dresser fit the bill. 

Naturally he chose blue for the color, and as time goes by I may let him modge podge on some cars or sports pictures to make it look more like a kid’s dresser…

Although with all the stuff he piled on top minutes after I placed it in his room, it’s undeniably a little boy’s dresser.  We’ve got legos, an airplane, cars, a Dale Earnhardt Jr. lunch box a Horrid Henry book and of course his Cars tissue box.

It double as a headboard to save space, and now looking at it, I see I should paint the white bed the same blue, so it would all match and look like all one piece.  

Add that to the list of projects to do.

Break out the chalk!

I’m so excited. 

I planned to paint two walls in black chalkboard paint, but then I got to Home Depot and found this!   Tintable chalkboard paint!  

Forget plain old black or green chalkboard paint, think purple or blue or raspberry.  There’s 12  different colors to choose from.  I’m thinking chalkboards in every room.

 Ok, maybe not every room.

But, the Kitchen.  The inside of a cabinet door or pantry for a shopping list.

The Kids Rooms.  Big polka dots (like 12 inches) in fun colors to write in notes or reminders or chores.

The Bathroom.  The back of the door with reminders of brush teeth,  flush potty (at 7 1/2 you would think they could remember this on their own…but, they can’t), clean the sink, etc.

The hallway.   A coordinating chair rail height stripe to write in motivational quotes and sayings….or A,B,C’s for the little one.

Oh yes, this is going to be fun.  And yes, I will post photos when I actually use this paint.  But I was just so excited that I had to post before I even tried it.  ( I have used the black in the past).

For more ideas you can check out the Rust-oleum website here.  And no, this is not a promotional post.  I just happened to find this stuff on my own.   But if anyone wants to send any products my way, I’ll be happy to check them out.

We’ve been doing lots of decorative painting this week.   So much so that we had to go out and buy new paints (even with over 60 colors, somehow I always need a new one….it’s kind of a sickness like buying fabric)

And since I have so many all set in a big container I discovered that the best way to see the colors as I need them is to mark the top of the bottle so I don’t have to pull each bottle out and look at it every time I need a different color. 

I used to also have them all grouped by colors to make searching easier; but then I had kids who help and never put them back where they belong.  So I gave up on the bit of organization.

It’s almost done.  Finally.

We started on painting a fish theme in the kids bathroom two months ago (there’s nothing like blog posts to keep you honest on just how long you’ve been procrastinating on getting a project done) and it’s finally almost finished.

We thought we’d offer up the sneak preview you see above.

The twins are doing alot of the painting in this room.  They are making some pretty neat fish and are very proud of themselves.

We should finish up this week and we’ll show the finished product next week.

And I promise I’ll figure out the lighting issues and get some better pictures than today’s.

Poor Makenna has had this 1960’s gold flamingo waste can in her room for 6 months.  She tried to cover it with magnets (since it’s metal), but that really didn’t help the situation.   Gold flamingo garbage cans don’t go with pink ponies and princesses.

Enter, the pink spray paint.

New waste can.  Makenna is much happier now.

It still needs some embellishments.  She plans to paint the raised flamingo and trees around it with some acrylic paints.  Pink flamingos work with pink princesses I think….it’s all pink right?

Silly me, I have promised to paint the kids bathroom and bedrooms this spring.

Why I did this not, I’m not sure, considering anyone who knows me will tell you that once it’s warm out the majority of my ‘free time’ is spent outdoors ‘playing in the dirt’ (as my husband likes to say.) 

The bedroom painting I have managed to stall by telling the twins that we can’t start painting designs until they can keep their room neat for a week.   At this rate I won’t have to paint their rooms till sometime after they’ve moved out.

But the bathroom, I should do.  Not that they keep it neat all the time, but because it’s the ‘public bathroom’ in our house that is the one guests use when they are visiting.  Plus, the bathroom is small and manageable with a lot of tile and very little to actually paint.  So, I can do this.

We got this really cute Nemo border to go along with the fish theme that I’m carrying over from Alexandra’s room at the old house.  Now that she is big, and will be sharing a room with her big sister fish are out in that bedroom. 

To keep me focused there’s this great site Design Dazzle that I look to every day to give me inspiration and keep me motivated to paint.   She does all the work of finding great room and decorating ideas and posting something fun each day.

So now it’s time to get some blue paint, and get painting on our next rainy day.   And I promise I’ll post pictures when I’m done.

This was to be Alexandra’s room in our old house.

I had to take pictures the other day because it was getting painted over before selling the house, as was our special twins room murals.

What was so special was that it was designed and much of it painted by the twins for their baby sister.

I was so disappointed we didn’t get to finish it before deciding to move.

One wall was this underwater scene and then above it was to be a distant mountain range that would tail off to another wall where there would be a scene with palm trees and elephants and tigers.

We all liked it so much that we are painting a fish scene in the kids bathroom this spring.

There’s a bunch of light blue tile and a big, big mirror, so there’s not as much room for fish, but that will make it more manageable.

I’ll post pictures when it’s done.