more color!

After painting a bunch of rooms together (when my husband was home for a few days over the holidays) we have been working on painting another room or two per weekend.


It is a nice way to do it - getting something accomplished each week, but without any all day marathons or too much at a time - keeps us all happy and boys not overdone.


This week we did the kitchen, front hall, and dining room. Everything is feeling cozy and comfortable. Which is just what we need when the deep freeze hits.


I love having some color inside when it is white outside! Ahhh, January!


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cozy home.

Wow. Has it really been 10 days since I posted? Hope you all had a wonderful holiday week. We went from sick boy to full on holidays with family straight to a week with my husband home and lots of work around the house.

Some people look to 'spring cleaning' for their annual refresh. We usually pick the time between solstice and the new year for the big stuff. Once we are done with the holiday celebrations we like to clean, organize, refresh and get the house feeling good. It is a wonderful feeling to have a cozy beautiful house for the new year and the deep freeze inside part of the winter.

We started out with putting away the holiday decorations, cleaning and organizing. We moved on to some new furniture, spackling, painting accent walls in many rooms, and re-arranging furniture.

So, we did a bit of this,


and moved the furniture in.


And did a bit of this,



and moved the furniture in.


And did some more of this,


and on we go room to room, rearranging and fixing and painting.


The boys have a new space - they switched rooms, added some new much needed furniture, painted a wall with the color they chose (a great robins egg blue), and have it just how they want it. Everything looks so fresh.

We have a few more walls on our list to complete before the weekend is out, and then we'll just have a few other rooms to work on each weekend for the next month (or two). Ahhh. Feels good.

We are ready to ring in the new year! We plan on having a wonderful evening spent together at home - enjoying the fruit of our hard work, bringing this year to a close, and looking to the future. We have good food, fun games, and some meaningful ritual. Bring on 2011!

How do you plan to welcome the new year?


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painted pots.

I always find that sick kids get to a point where they want to be busy, but are still pretty tired and can only do bits and spurts of things at a time. That is when I like to pull out a longer all day sort of craft. It is interesting, creative, requires short bursts of activity, and yet keeps kids engaged, even if they are not feeling so hot.


G was sick all last week and so we did a few projects like that. Our favorite was painting terra cotta pots. The boys have been interested in India lately, and so we have been checking out books on culture, history, food, holidays and more. A few books we have are huge and full of large vibrant photos - which made us all decide that we want to create an Indian theme on our deck this summer. So we need pots!


I usually have a bunch of terra cotta pots around for projects. In addition to their use as plant pots, they make great pencil holders, paintbrush holders, and candle holders!


Painting pots is easy. It just takes a few steps. We paint the base layer. Let dry. Paint any other layers or designs. Let dry. Varnish and let dry. You can find craft acrylic paint just for ceramics at most craft stores. While this project does need a grown up for setup and cleanup at each step, my boys were able to paint, stamp, decorate, and varnish pretty independently (although I did only put out one solid color at a time). I added a few little paint embellishments too, for fun.


They all look so great and will be perfect for holding individual herbs on our colorful deck this summer - and it is nice to paint and fill our home with such vibrant color in February!

leaf rubbings.

G has been getting into rubbings. He likes rubbing textures from outside - bark, table tops, wood, concrete. So, of course, rubbing leaves is pretty cool too. Today we did fall color rubbings of leaves from our maple tree.


You just get a leaf, tape it onto the table to keep still. Place a piece of paper over the leaf (we used nice resume paper since it was thicker with a light texture, yet not as thick as drawing/watercolor paper). You can tape the paper down a little too - keep it from moving. Then rub the leaf! We used stockmar block crayons - they work GREAT for rubbings and the colors are nice and intense, but you could also use unwrapped regular crayons.


The boys like to mix it up - so used a bunch of different colors. When the rubbing was done, they painted (using watercolors) a bit over the top using brown and red paint.


After they dry (I put into a book to help dry flat) you can cut them out and use them however you like. We have been making cards to send to family but they would be nice mounted and framed or on fall banners. They are very colorful and very fall!