Wonderful Wall Art

What could be better than letting your child decorate their own room? How about doing a family art project together so everyone can decorate! That's what we did this weekend. A few days ago I found a post on HowAboutOrange about wall art and thought that it would be a fun thing that we all could do together. So we all went to the craft store and found the foam core, for the boys I had them do theirs on the thinner kind and me and Greg chose the 1/2", it's around $5-$6 for a sheet of the thicker kind and about $3 for the thinner kind. Not to bad considering that they are fairly large pieces of board. Then we all went down to the scrap booking isle. In the turtorial it said to use decorative paper and where better to find pretty paper then in the scrap booking isle? I let the boys each pick 3 diff sheets and me and Greg got some as well. Then after we all made of our mind on what we wanted we went in search of paint for the sides. You can buy little bottles of acrylic paint for about $1.50 each in many many diff colors. The boys each got one color that would go well and I got 2 diff ones, Greg shared a basic black with Zack. The only thing left was the spray adhezive and x-acto knife. We finally got all we needed and left the store with our bounty.


I traced the largest piece of paper on the board for the boys and told them that they can draw a shap in the middle and then another one, I also showed them online where the idea came from so they had something to reference. Zack drew a curvey square and triangle and circles, Johnathan wanted something more even, so we went with the basic picture frame style with a few rectangles and solid squares.


For Zacks it was easier to cut the shape out first and then spray it and stick the paper to it and cut off the extra, for Johnathan I stuck the paper first and then cut out the frames. I did mine similar to Johnathan's and Greg used 3 solid rectangles for his. After everything was cut out and the paper was glued down, I painted the edges and that was it.


It is a really simple project and the pieces can be moved around and rearranged when ever the mood strikes.
This is Zack's, he chose a orange and black flame paper, solid orange paper, and a shiney metallic silver paper with the edges painted black.
This is Johnathan's, he chose hot pink paper (yes, he really did choose pink, if you ask him it's his favorite color) and then a pink and cream flower design paper.
This is Greg's, he used a solid brown, and then the other 2 that look like vintage ink block prints and layered them on top of each other. It looks really good in person. I love the black and white designs.
And this is mine. I did mine is a dark green, a light moss water color type of paper, a green and cream fern leaf paper and a cream water color paper.

This was such a good project and I think that I will be using this idea in the future many times. There is so many different possibilites.

What a weekend!

Wow. This weekend went it all directions. We had some good times and there was some bad times, but it was the last weekend of the kids' summer so it's to be expected, right?

Friday I got the boys a bit early from there dad's house and we went and had lunch with Greg and then we went school clothes shopping. I was really glad that we got it all done in one trip, and didn't have to stretch it out over the weekend. They picked out some good things and were very please with their bounty. When Greg got off work we went to the mall and wandered around just in case there was something else that the boys needed. They didn't find anything they needed so we settled on a mall dinner and and some more wandering and then back home.

Saturday we went to the craft shop to get the foam core board and the other things needed for our craft project. This is where I got the inspiration. Then we took the boys out for a "I can't believe you and gonna be in 2nd and 4th grade already" lunch at Old Chicago. It's always nice when we take the boys out for a nice lunch.

I also decided to give World of Warcraft a shot this weekend and see what all the hype is about, and for you out there that like role playing games once in a while, this one is a well rounded game. I thought there was way more gore and whatnot but it's actually fairly decent. I was surprised that I like it as much as I do. The boys played outside with friends and me and Greg hung out in the house. We made out wall art projects and Zack had a melt down. Post is on it's way.

Sunday we didn't do much of anything. Went grocery shopping, did laundry, kids played, and we cleaned up a bit. I made my something delicious, but it wasn't chocolaty like I had planned on before. I ended up making cinnamon spice cupcakes with a sweet cream cheese filling. For dinner Greg made hamburgers out on the grill, I choose turkey for mine since it's slightly less on the fat scale, but the rest of them had beef. They turned out to be the best damn burgers that I have ever had. Yes we both took pics of our creations. Post on those is coming soon also.

Monday was spent getting ready, doing more laundry, relaxing a bit, and yes of course playing some World of Warcraft.

Today was the first day of school and we all walked to school and go them in there classes and said our bye's and have a great first day.

Over all it was a good weekend, altho I could have did without the meltdown from Zack but what can I expect, he is almost 8 and wanted pizza. Oh well.

I plan on having the cupcake/burger post tomorrow and our wall art post on Wednesday.

I would love to know how your labor day weekend was spent. Don't be shy, come drop me a line or two.

The End Of Our Summer.

Well, it's Friday, this is the last weekend of our summer. It has been a pretty good summer for us and the boys. They got to go camping 2 times, one with us and our friends and the other time with my mom at the beach. We went an amusement park, hiking, and had a great 4th of July at the beach. They played with their friends and got new bikes. We went and saw movies and hung out at home. Overall it was good.

I think this weekend we will finish up school clothes shopping, get hair cuts, and go out to dinner. If we have time and all of our manners are minded we will go to the nickel arcade.

Oh and I found a great home decorating project that I think we all are gonna try.

You can find the details and instructions here and no that's not my pic, I don't think I could do nearly as well, but we will give it a go and I will post pics of that as well.

I am also gonna try to cook up something delicious and possibly chocolaty, so keep a look out for the recipe and pics later next week maybe around Wednesday.

Have a great weekend and please comment if you have the time!! Thanks!