Blowing Paint for Kid Art

We did a little blow painting exercise last week. The kids got to blow into straws and they didn't get any paint on their hands or clothes. In my book that's a successful stress-free project for mama! Plus it's fun to see where the paint goes, and how force changes the direction and flow of the paint.

For this project all you need is some painting paper (purchased at a local craft store or the stationery department of Target), paint (I used Crayola finger paint), water, straws, and paper cups (to mix the paint in). 

Mix each color of paint separately with enough water to make it runny, so that it will be easy to blow across the paper with a straw. Putting two or three different colors onto the paper will provide extra fun and also interesting contrast. We started with the paint overlapping a bit.

To finish off their pieces of art my kids used a Sharpie to add detail to their little monsters. Be sure to wait for the paint to thoroughly dry before diving in with the marker.

This project is also really cool with simple (thinned) black paint or ink. Make sure to monitor little ones so they don't suck on their straw, or lick paint off the end of it. If your children are a little older and don't need as much direction, consider joining in yourself!

On a Painting Spree.

After four plus years of living in this house, the contractor white paint that is on all of the walls can no longer be cleaned. Well, really, it hasn't looked clean in quite some time, I just can't stand it anymore. At any rate, we're finally at a place where we can paint it- so we are! It's a slow and arduous task to be sure, with three little ones running around, but we're determined to have the living room, dining room, and kitchen finished by the end of the summer. My husband just got a month long temp job that will certainly make this time-frame a stretch, but yay(!) for some work.

It didn't take me terribly long to settle on a color for the living room and dining room area. Although technically two rooms, the extra wide doorway between them makes the dining room truly feel like an extension of the living room. Both rooms are pretty small, so it was no question for me that we would paint them the same color so as not to make them feel even tinier. While browsing Pinterest for color inspiration, I realized that I really love neutral wall color in living rooms. I thought about going with a shade of white, but realized that I needed a bit more of a change, so I opted for Crown Point Sand, which is part of Benjamin Moore's Historical Colors collection. It creates a nice backdrop, has a definite greenish hue, and seems like it will compliment our cherry bookshelves and grandfather clock nicely.

The kitchen was a little bit more of a trial to choose a color for. I've always dreamed of having a yellow kitchen. You know, that perfect shade of cheery yellow? Well, it's not super easy to find. Yellow shades are tough! I'm not a professional, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money on purchasing paint samples. I also wanted to be sure that the color would flow coming off of the dining room, so I decided to stay within Benjamin Moore's Historical Colors collection. Hawthorne Yellow it is, since that's practically the only real yellow they've got! It is certainly a more dull yellow with undertones of red. I'm anxious to see the color on a whole wall. I think it will also enable me to keep the red accessories I've got going on in the kitchen already.

There is a ton of woodwork in our home. A ton. And since the bottom half of all of the kitchen walls are wainscoting, we wanted to choose a trim color that would work in all three rooms. And while it looks lovely, all that woodwork has to be sanded before it can be primed. The old plaster walls are soaking up the primer as well. That means lots of sanding, two coats of primer, and two coats of paint on everything. Blech. We've been painting for a couple of weeks now, and haven't even finished one room yet! But we'll get there.