Things that make me happy

I've been feeling a bit yuck lately so I thought I'd make a list of the things that made me happy this week.

1. Smiles and laughter of my kids



2. Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting
3. a good book. Like This and this
4. The smell of rain
5. Lilacs
6. The way my Fiance can always make me laugh










7. My girl getting her first hit at her softball game













8. Chai Tea
9. BBQing and Sitting on the patio on a warm spring day
10. Oreo Blizzards

DIY Upcycled old toy rack

This is my first DIY project of the season. It was a beautiful 80 degrees outside today and I was not about to waste this gorgeous day by staying indoors all day listening to 90's on 9 (Srius XM Raido yo!). I've been wanting to do something special for the front porch for a while now and after scouring the garage for stuff we never use anymore that I could re purpose into a porch planter for flowers I found this:

This is a toy rack I bought for Miss Priss when she was 3yrs old. She doesn't use it anymore because shes 9 now and "Princesses are for babies."
This is what it is SUPPOSED to look like ~~~~~~~~~~~~>>
But naturally over the course of the past 6 years and moving multiple times most of the little buckets were lost and the rack itself has suffered more then a little wear and tear to the paint job.

Ok so first things first, the supply list.
*a drop cloth (if I get paint all over the garage floor or the driveway the fiance might kill me)
*Some sort of Primer paint. I used Grey Gesso. I was going to use white but 1) I didn't have enough on hand and 2) I wasn't confident it would cover up the existing picture without using 50 coats of paint. Now I suppose this part isn't ENTIRELY necessary if you're going to use a dark spray paint.
*Paint brush for primer
*Spray paint of your choice. I had Green, black, and Pink on hand
*Stencil (optional)

goodbye Disney

Ok so here we go....

Lil E was supervising the project

Paint over the picture with primer. It doesn't have to be perfect just try to get as much covered as possible. Let it dry.









Next I drug the whole thing out to the driveway because if I got spray paint on the car I'd never hear the end of it from the Fiance. Then I spray painted the crap outta it :) I hung a stencil on the sides to give  it a design. This step isn't necessary but I thought I needed to jazz it up a bit.

GREEN!

Pretty leaves

Don't do what I did and spray too close.
Spray paint drips :(

While that is Drying I worked on the few boxes that didn't get lost in the move(s)

finding 4 out of 9 isn't  too bad

First I peeled off as much of the stickers as possible then I spray painted them. I had black and pink on hand. The black turned out really well but I had to do 3 coats of the pink to get it to cover correctly. I should've primed them first.

The Finished product



Now I just need to add flowers

When I was finished (so proud of myself) I quickly showed the Fiance and he grimaced at the pink. *sigh* Details, Details. To make him happy I will probably go back and paint them white so they look better against the house and the white railing on the porch. Also I may have Mr. handy man drill a hole in the bottom of my new "flower pots" to give them proper drainage.
And that's it folks!


*UPDATE*

I did indeed re paint the pink buckets to make them white. Here is the end result:

crafty stuff for a non-crafty girl

The crafty things I'd like to do this Summer:
1. Gel Medium Transfers and photo transfers. This is another cool way of attaching a photo to canvas.
2. DVD Coloring case. This would be perfect for Miss Priss when we go on our long car rides. Everything is in a handy dandy little bundle.
3. State string art thingy. Id like to make one of Washington and one of Idaho with the heart around my hometown and the location of my fiances (ooohhhh...I like that word. Fiance!) family cabin.
4.Glitter Wine glasses
5. Play with chalkboard paint:  Chalkboard glasses, serving platter, pots for my plants except in pretty colors.
6. Upcycled photo album. Ive already made a couple similar to this. They are fun and super easy.
7. I'd like to explore the world of polymer clay jewelry
8. oh and I need to start painting again.

Priest Lake

Things I'd like to eventually paint:

Chimney Rock

Nature trail next to where I grew up

Priest Lake

stairs leading to Multnomah Falls

I'll keep you updated as to the progress (if any) of my projects :)

Hands

You can see part of my bandaid

 Its quiet. Very quiet. The only noise in the house is gently sucking, breathing, and cooing of the feeding newborn. It's the middle of the night and I'm doing what I do most nights at this time, answering to Lil E's feeding needs. As I sit in the nursery rocking back and forth in the glider holding my beautiful baby boy I tend to do a lot of thinking. There is no noise to drown out the thinking at this time of the night. Tonight I was thinking about my hands. Yes, Hands.
Today I decided it would be a good idea to try to open packaging with a knife instead of scissors. I'm clumsy so I should've known better. As I'm opening the packaging my wet hand (yes, yes, I know. I don’t need a lecture) slips and I stab the oh so sensitive spot between my thumb and pointer finger. I didn’t cut it...I stabbed it. It was such a beautifully clean stab that it took the pain a few seconds to reach my brain. But when it did, Oh GODS did it hurt! The throbbing in my hand has yet to cease. I didn’t realize how very useful certain parts of me were until I could no longer use them. Tonight it was my palm and my thumb on my left hand that I had no use of. Making a bottle and changing a dirty diaper in the middle of the night is extremely difficult with only 1 ½ hands...especially when the half I'm missing is the thumb.

*sigh*

As I'm thinking about the nagging, throbbing ache that is my left hand my mind turns to the history of my hands and all that they have done for me over the past twenty-something years.

Tiny baby hands

In the beginning my hands were carefree. They were for holding hands bigger then my own. They were for swinging on trees, making mud pies, throwing random objects at my sister, and squishing spaghetti between my little fingers. They were for dipping in finger paint, holding crayons, markers, chalk, and writing on walls.

Writing on walls soon turned into writing on paper. My hands became nimble and agile enough to write numbers, letters, words, sentences, and then paragraphs. They wrote math problems and stories. They painted pictures and made gluing art projects together a breeze.

Lil E's hands are so small

In more recent years my hands seem to have forgotten their carefree life. These are important hands with important jobs now. These hands of mine have a more noble duty. They are now used to hold bottles, binkies, burp rags, and babies. They chop, slice, dice, scoop, and stir countless family dinners. They fold laundry, do dishes, and scrub bathrooms. They pick up children when they fall down, brush off dirty little knees, and wipe away tears. My hands give loving caresses, pats of encouragement, and high fives for a job well done.

My hands have been bloodied and bruised, slammed and mangled, broken, misused and abused. Most of all my hands have been under-appreciated. But yesterday the amazing man in my life showed my hands they were appreciated and loved. Yesterday he recognized all the things these hands do for our family and in honor of that slipped a ring on this injured hand of mine.

It's so shiny!

Introductions

So I guess introductions are in order.

Hi, I'm Melly.

Now that that’s out of the way, onto the important stuff.

Things you should know:

I love to paint but I do not consider myself creative.

I like the color pink, glitter, shiny objects, rainbows, and thunder storms.

I'm addicted to Oreos and karaoke.

I hate small talk. The awkward silence drives me nuts.

I like to cook but I'm not very good at it. I am a very Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade sort of cook. If its complicated or takes longer then 45 min, I probably wont cook it...unless it's in my crockpot (I love my crockpot).
I am a big giant nerd. I like epic fantasy novels, I used to play D&D, I have dressed up for a nerd convention...twice, and I studied ancient norse relgious pracices and various pagan mythologies for 5 years.

I am smart but I only know a lot about a few select subjects.

I have 2 wonderful (most of the time) kids. Miss Priss is a stubborn tweenybopper who thinks shes smarter then me and knows everything. Then there's Lil E. He doesn’t do much (yet) besides eat and sleep and poop

and cry

a lot

at 3am.

In fact as I'm typing this, he's crying. Its 3am. I'm holding him, trying to get him back to sleep and typing one handed. I'm talented like that

and sleep deprived.

I am new to this whole stay at home mom thing. I have always held at least 1 full time job sense I was 16 so this is uncharted territory. I thought I'd have a lot more time on my hands then I actually do (did I mention Lil E cries a lot?). I'm also new to this whole blogging thing. I'm not very good at talking about things...and stuff... and I'm mostly a boring person so I'm just testing the waters with this.

I suppose that's it...for now.