Painting with the Kiddos

Happy New Year! I can't believe it's already 2015. Lover and I were talking the other day about how we're pretty sure that it's 2003 or possibly 2004, but no later. Isn't it crazy how time flies?

Anyways, everyone is posting about their goals and resolutions and how they will change and improve their life in 2015. I love those posts, but I kind of feel like our life has gone through lots of changes in the last few months, and therefore don't feel the need to completely overhaul everything in 2015. Know what I mean? I'm setting some goals of what I want to be this year, but not much of what I want to do.  So - let's skip right over all that goal talk, and get to a fun project I did with the kids over the last few months.

Back when it was warm and sunny, I took the kids to Michaels and purchased a really big canvas. I think it was 24x30 but it may have been bigger. I'm too lazy to measure it right now. :)  I think it cost around $20 with a coupon. We also picked up a few acrylic craft paint tubes in the colors I knew I wanted for this project, and then waited for a nice day where I had the patience to clean up a huge mess. :)


So basically, I stripped the kids down to diapers, put their little smocks on (KK nearly drowned in hers, she's such a peanut!) and let them go to town on the canvas. To make things a little easier, I gave them a paper plate with only one color on it at a time. They would paint for a bit, and when they ran out of paint, I would switch out their plate with one with a new color on it. I didn't worry about fresh brushes, just new plates of paint.


Yes, the kids did eat some of the paint, and definitely painted things along with the canvas, (themselves! the balcony railing!) but they were pretty good about just painting the canvas. About half way through I hauled out a rubbermaid tote and set the canvas on top of that, which helped keep Peanut from walking over the canvas constantly. There's a little foot print though in the paint, which I love.













The paint dried fast enough between the layers that there was very little blending, which is what I was hoping for. Just lots of layers of happy color. Then I delivered them straight to the bathtub, and scrubbed those little fingers and legs and toes and ears. The bath was kind of gross afterwards, but the kids had a blast. They were so excited to show Daddy what they made, and I hung it up in their room pretty quickly after that so that it wouldn't get ruined. I wasn't done yet, but I wanted to keep it safe.



Then my parents came to visit, and then my brother came for Thanksgiving, and then I was sick sick sick for a while, so I didn't make any progress on this project. But I finally sat down one day and finished up the canvas. I've always loved the quote:

"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."

by George Bernard Shaw. And I thought it would be fitting in the kiddos' room. So with my trusty paint pens I painted the second half of the quote onto the canvas. I didn't want to cover up too much of the kids' painting, so I just went with part of the quote.

Then I ordered two of my favorite pictures of the day they painted the canvas, and put them into thrifted frames I found a few weeks before that. The frames came with some weird prints that had been professionally framed, which I proceeded to rip out and replace with my cuties. I kept the cardstock that was the background for the prints, because it went perfectly with my pictures! Love that. :)



And here's the final project, complete with Javi's bed that we purchased right before my parent's visit. It's the IKEA Brimnes bed, and it pulls out from a twin into a king. (You just add a second mattress) We slept on it during their visit, and it's pretty comfy. And so convenient. :) Javi, of course, occasionally sleeps on it but also sleeps in his chair, on the floor, under the changing table... basically anywhere but the bed. :)





They are hung a little higher than I might like, but experience has taught me that there WILL be bed jumping and general shenanigans, so I figured better safe than sorry. So that's our latest project. I love it, and the kids do too. They constantly point to themselves in the pictures. I also love that the whole thing will easily transport and fit in to a new room, since we're most likely moving in a few months. So, what do you think? Do you love it as much as we do?