• artsy fartsy,  Bug,  movies,  party party

    Painting and a Movie

    I think I watch this show too much. I desperately want to be Debbie Travis and paint my house into something fabulous. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible since we rent and on top of that we rent from the crazy landlord. We don’t even want to go there. I don’t care how “cheap” paint is.

    But that doesn’t mean I can’t paint cardboard boxes. Painting cardboard is fun. The whole process was a lot easier than I ever expected. I walked into Home Depot, showed them the colors I wanted, waited for ten minutes for them to shake it up and nine dollars later I was out the door with my two shades of pinkkkity pink.

    Of course cardboard boxes don’t need any prepping or sanding and you can’t tape anything off anyway. All I had to do was tape down my $1.98 plastic drop cloth to our patio floor to keep it from blowing away and we were off to the painting races. It’s a good thing I watch that show because the paint roller was just the thing. It worked perfectly. I probably wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t watch Debbie Travis every morning with Baby Bug.

    The only difficult thing about painting the boxes was entertaining Baby Bug. She got tired of being jailed in her exersaucer after about ten minutes. She wanted to paint too. I let her play with a dry brush but she knew the difference. She kept reaching out for the pink and when I got close she would touch the paint splotches on my arm. Who says she doesn’t like pink? Thankfully I was able to finish it up during her afternoon nap.

    And that was that. Now what? Well a movie of course. (1.33 MB Quicktime)

    I’ve been meaning to write a post about all the new things Baby Bug is doing. You’ll see she’s found her voice in the movie. She amazes me every day. She’s so smart! I can’t even begin to imagine what year two is going to be like. I feel bad that I’m going to post all about painting cardboard boxes on her birthday and I’m not going on and on about Baby Bug (because believe me I could go on and on…) but it’s late and the heater is broken still and I think my fingers are going to break off if I type any more. So I will save it for yet another few days.

  • artsy fartsy,  Bug,  party party

    The Amazing Cardboard Cat(box) Castle!

    The next step in Operation Pinkkkity First Birthday Party is the Cardboard Box Cat Castle. I’ve been planning this in my head ever since I bought that pink tube way back in December. Was it only a month ago? It seems like ages ago.

    The tube didn’t play into the design of construction as much as I planned. I thought I’d make the tube go between two cardboard box rooms but I had to nix that idea because the tube is big and I have to leave some space in my living room for people to stand around and eat and stuff. Not everybody who comes to this party will want to play in the box castle. Believe me, I’ve been in and out of it many times and it’s a little tight for grown-ups. Fun but tight.

    Baby Bug and the cats have been having a blast with me making this. It’s like Disneyland every day at our house. Toby is hiding in his back room office muttering to himself. He’s so over the whole party already. I’m only allowed to plan one party a year and you can see why. It takes over.

    Almost everything is done though. Just a few more posts about painting the castle…. um, PINK!!! the cupcakes and cake and I think that oughtta do it before the big day. I just hope I have time to take pictures on the day itself. I might have to enlist some help from friends on that one because I also want to make sure Baby Bug has a good time and I can’t be running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to document everything and be the hostess with the mostest too.

    I’m a terrible hostess. I want to talk to everybody but I also want to make sure every stray piece of trash is in the trash can and that seems to distract me quite a bit. I’ve never done this before and be a mom too… not to mention the chaos that other people’s children add to the mix.

    Toby and I were at a party over the holidays and there were about six or seven 8-10 year olds there also. OH. MY. GOODNESS. It was mayhem! They kept running in and out of the house and leaving the door open and letting the arctic draft freeze us all to death. And of course there was the yelling and the bopping each other over the head with plastic shovels. All the parents didn’t even seem to be phased by this. I think when Baby Bug gets that age and wants to invite her whole class, I’m going to retire from party planning. Or maybe we’ll just go to Paris or something.

    Just kidding. We aren’t made of money. Although Toby did say to me the other day, “If you do this when she is one, what are you going to do when she is sixteen?”

    “Go to Paris,” I answered. Of course this is all part of my master plan where I become a famous illustrator and Sanrio buys the rights to all my pink kitty characters, and Gumball TAKES OVER THE WORLD!!!!!

    A girl can dream.