Living in the Projects (Part 1)

Its been a while since I've posted anything, but we've been busy at the Smith house the past several weeks.  We've been doing some traveling, but mainly we've been busy with lots of projects, and it seems like every night when I come home from work there is something around the house that needs to be done.

Since Maren finished this semester of grad school, she's been spending a lot of time on Pinterest.  She had found some great recipes and other ideas she's done around the house.  She also found a great project that we did with the kids recently.  We made some flower pots for both the grandmas for Mother's day.  We spent a Sunday afternoon and a couple of week nights working on it, and the kids had a blast!  Here is what we did...


Supplies:
Clay flower pots
Acrylic paint
Paint brushes
Spray sealant
Potting soil
Flowers of your choice
Tiny hands and feet
Lots of patience and cleanup rags!






First we cleaned the flower pots and painted them white.  Emry did a decent job using a paintbrush, and surprisingly she didn't get too messy!  After two coats of white paint it was time to let them dry....

We put them on these stakes in the yard to let them dry really well.  Then it was time to decorate them...

Emry went first.  We tested hand prints on a piece of paper and found when she dipped her hand in the paint, it was way to saturated and the prints looked sloppy and runny.  It worked much better when we painted her hand with a paintbrush.

Showing off her hand after mom wiped it clean!

By using a brush we could make sure the paint wasn't too thick.  Emry absolutely loved it!  She kept saying "Paint, hand!"  We did have to assist her to make sure she kept her fingers extended and didn't smear it everywhere.

Next it was Whitney's turn.  We could only do her feet because she wouldn't keep her hand open long enough for us to make a good print.  The cold paint on her feet made Whitney jerk her leg back when each time we applied a coat.  But she didn't fuss about it at all, which made the process a lot easier to do!

She didn't fuss or cry at all, what a trooper!

When Emry saw Whitney doing the footprints she said "Whitney foot paint!" She thought it was pretty cool, so she started saying "Emry foot paint!" We had only planned on doing her hands, but we found a couple spots to cram her footprints on there too.  

You can see on the pots to the left and right of the picture
that we had to put Emry's foot diagonally just
to fit it on the small flower pots!

We decided to make butterflies out of Whitney's foot prints, and to get the wings shaped correctly , we had to put her foot prints on the opposite side...so Whit's right foot made the left wing and her left foot made the right wing.  (Don't ask me why I felt the need to explain that, I'm pretty sure you all know what "opposite" means.)

Here is a visual in case you don't understand the concept of opposites,
or my full explanation of what I meant by opposite.

It was fun, but messy.  And Whitney still had paint in between her toes over 2 weeks later! 

Emry kept looking at her hand and saying "messy!"

After the girls did their prints, Maren and I painted the top ring around the pot either pink or green. We used my finger for the body of the butterflies then painted little eyes and antenna on them.  I wanted to paint "Grandma's pot" on the side of them, but Maren wouldn't let me.

After we let them dry for about 48 hours, we took the pots back outside and put them on the stakes again. We used a spray sealant approved for outdoor use to protect the paint from chipping or smearing.  When that was dry, it was finally time to plant the flowers.  Emry had a lot of fun digging around in the dirt.  For some reason she liked pulling the potting soil out of the bag and throwing it in the yard.

Yes, that is a jack-o-lantern jacket, but it was a cool morning
and it fits her right now, so don't judge!

The project it made for a fun couple of days and the grandmas loved their pot. 

The finished product!

They were a big hit with the grandma's!

This is just one of the projects I've been living in lately, I'll tell you about the big one we've been working on for Emry's upcoming birthday really soon...