SCHOOL'S.....BACK.....TOMORROW!!

I have a lot of teacher friends who are bummed out about Christmas break being over, which always makes me feel a little, well, confused about my thoughts. I CAN'T WAIT! I love my kids, and the holidays are fun with them, but....I can only take so much arguing about toys, about she did it- he did it, "Mom I'm bored, and them staying up late! I'm ready for the routine to get back to normal! I still have my 1 1/2 year old at home which at her stage is a lot of work, and much less time to be able to do the projects that want so badly to do But I am hoping tomorrow will be productive!

 1.Get Christmas trees down and stored away 

2. Get the million loads of laundry caught up

AND 

3. Go get my 1st Annie Sloan paint!

I have to do it in order because we all know if I do #3 1st, #'s 1 & 2....forget about it!

We all have our plans for the day and we can only hope that by the end of the day 1/3 of the list gets accomplished.

I wanted to show just a couple of little things I did last month

My Mother-in-law moved a few months ago and while going through her house to pack it up, there were some things that nobody really wanted. These were things that weren't my style as well, but think outside the box! When nobody claimed the country coat rack (that's what it is, right?) I said "I'll take that!"

 A cute little message board to put in an entry way or kitchen! Since I have 3 kids, and love vintage style numbers, I instantly thought of the no.1 no.2 no.3. Where do we go when we are looking for vintage numbers?? Graphics Fairy of course! 

    

I used the chalk on the back of the image technique. I rubbed chalk on the back of the paper, taped on the paper, and outlined the image with a pencil. Once I took the paper off, there was an outline, and I just painted it in with black paint. I distressed the letters and numbers a bit but didn't distress the blue paint. I then put a clear coat on (except for on the chalkboard). I was originally thinking that I would remove the pegs and replace them with the kind of knobs that you find on the water spout thing outside your house. I'm pretty sure that's the technical term for them.  I found 3 of them at the habitat for humanity resale shop, but I think I'm going to use them on something else, so into the stock pile they went.

Another thing I did (since I had extra paint left over from the side table) I made little chalkboards for my sister-in-laws for Christmas

I felt a little bad because I decided to do these the day that we were all getting together. I would have loved writing each of them a cute little message, but you have to wait 3 days before you can write on it with chalk. I was literally drying the chalkboard paint with a hair dryer 5 mins before we left! 

I took 4 picture frames and painted the glass first with primer, then I did 3 coats of chalkboard paint. Usually 2 coats would be fine, but for some reason I felt it needed a 3rd. In between coats of the chalkboard paint I would do a coat of spray paint on the frames, which also started with primer. I made the little fabric flowers by twisting the fabric and hot gluing it as I twisted. Hot glued it to the picture frame, and ta-da!