Birthday Part 2

Birthday - Part 1

The Sidekick had a train themed birthday party.  I made invitations that look like train tickets, I'll have to take a picture or upload one or something.  In the meantime, here are some other photos:

The kids painted train cars and the first letter of their name. (A. loves painting objects, so much more so than paper.)

Choosing train cars and paint colors

Painting

(Pin the train on the tracks -- not a hit with the 3 and under crowd.  Maybe next year?)

Singing and cupcakes.  He liked blowing out the candles but didn't even eat his cupcake.  He ran off to play with friends

For Me?!!

Even more photos to come...

DIY Chalkboard Wall

I tried out Martha Stewart's recipe for chalkboard paint.  It worked!  (1 cup of acrylic paint with 2T unsanded grout.)  I used the same gray from my kitchen and did a little wall in my pantry/laundry area of our apartment.  The sidekick isn't too excited about it, but I think it's great for my grocery list.  

Art Thursday: Vase

For Art Thursday this week, the Sidekick and his Buddy decorated vases with tissue paper.  (Vases = repurposed candy container.)  Of course, the Sidekick's attention span didn't last long enough for him to make the flowers for the vase, but that's okay.

More Kitchen Updates

I painted my wall using a stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils.

 I used two grays right next to each other on the paint strip, but they turned out to be a greater difference between the two when they were on the wall.  The light colored high gloss gray on top, looks almost white, but when painted on white (which I did in my back hallway/laundry area for practice) it looks much darker.  Funny how colors are.  

Don't believe anyone who tells you stenciling is easy--especially the edges.  They are LYING.   Not easy and it's ALOT. OF. WORK.

And one more, a little darker lighting...

Birthday Bunting

Finally finished the birthday bunting that I started ages ago.  (The Sidekick's birthday is just around the corner and I had the pressure to finally finish it.)

I kinda dig the vintage looking fabric.  So I chose a vintage inspired kid print for the background.  It is a little more distracting than I thought it would be, but oh well.

My Mom actually did the tough part of appliqueing the letters. That part is perfection. Thanks Mom!

The back: 

More PV

The Sidekick especially loved seeing his uncle and was not happy when his uncle had to go to work in the morning of our last full day.  Nor was he happy when we dropped him off at him off at his own hotel.  A. wanted to go to his uncle's house (hotel) and play with him.

It's funny--A. was so excited to ride on an airplane on the way out but he did NOT want to leave our hotel at PV to get back on the airplane.  Serious meltdown.  When we were on the plane he didn't want to go home and requested to go to his uncle's house, yet again.

Not Your Average Zoo

Just got back from vacation in Puerto Vallarta.  We went to the Zoo while we were in PV.  We bought a bag that had various foods that we could feed the animals.  We were quite close to several of the animals.  (A flamingo bit me!)  And we bought a special ticket so the Sidekick could play with  and pet a 6-week-old baby tiger and a capuchino monkey.

Yay for vacations!

Art Thursdays

A friend and I are doing art/craft activities on Thursdays with our boys.  We take turns planning the art project each week.

Recently the project I organized was marbling with shaving cream.  We cut out some hearts to marble in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day.

Here's the link for the how to.

The only difference is that I don't have lots of acrylic paint, so I used drops of food coloring instead.  Seemed to work just fine, but the colors would have been brighter if I used paint.  

Kitchen Table Makeover

TA DA!

Before:

After:

I drew the lines on the table but this time I just paid someone to paint it for me. (Labor is very affordable here, afterall.) The guy we hired used auto paint on the table. He finishes it with soft cotton to get a really smooth finish.

It was a learning process. Turns out that they don't have machines here to mix your paint color, at least they aren't as common as they are in the US. Some guys actually mixes the paint by hand so the color isn't every going to be exact. (And good luck trying to get the exact color again. I hope you bought enough the first time!)

Case in point--I used the same shade of white for my guest bedroom set and the white on the kitchen table and they are not identical. (And that excludes that the table is in a glossy finish and the bedroom set is in a matte finish.)

Also a funny side note about paint here, is that there aren't tons of different whites.  Many paint stores don't ever have white paint chips.  You can buy the can of white paint which is untinted but many places won't mix a shade of white.

We started with a VERY light grey and then went the next shade darker, but it turned out more like two shades darker. C'est la vie. I still like it. Now to do something about that wall behind the mirror...