Mother's Day Painted Pots With Flowers

It's 10am PST when I am posting this and as such the pots were just given to the Mom's at a Mini Class Concert. So, though these are for Mother's Day, I am not letting the cat out of the bag by posting early. Onto the post.

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My son's Kindergarten Teacher asked me to help her figure out a pot painting project for Mother's Day. I thought the idea of the kids painting a pot and giving it to their Mom with a flower in it was a great idea. I set to work.

Before you set out, know that this was a lot of work since we had 34 pots to do. One or two pots would be a breeze though.

First I priced up the supplies to see that we could do this for about $5 or less per person. We were on budget:

• $0.77 : small clay pot at Home Depot
• $9/32=$0.28 : gallon of deck paint reject at Home Depot, in a colour (off white) that would work
• $4/32=$0.13 : clear coat can of spray
• $13/32=$0.41 : soil for pots
• $1.69 : price per plant

Grand Total: $3.28

I got the pots (the teacher purchased the supplies with a discount and handed it all off to me) and started work. First I had to remove sticker glue from them all.

Sanding sticker glue off pots in prep for priming them for kindergarten project pic.twitter.com/KRNxmeNxIw
— Mark Thistle (@mthistle) April 26, 2014

Then I primed them all off-white.

Next we did the painting at school with the kids and then it was onto giving a clear coat of gloss paint.

Pots being clear coated

The final steps were to add the soil and plants. And voila!

Pots ready to go home with Mom's!

The kids had a blast doing this project and so did I. It was a lot to take on 34 pots and I learned a couple things I would change next time. Those being:

• Open up the reject paint first. If it is full of little bubbles stay away, far away. The deck paint had a ton of bubbles that would not go away while I used it. I had to sand that off-white finish on 34 pots for 2 (and in some cases 3) coats of paint.
• Clear coat spray does not react well with ink pens. The "dry" pen runs when sprayed and makes names on the bottom a mess. Due to this I also held off from using a black marker to add highlights for the bugs faces.

Considering a Trip to Chitwan, Nepal

Image: Habitat for Humanity

Michele and I are considering a volunteering trip with Habitat for Humanity to build houses in Chitwan, Nepal. Yes, we have reached that point where we want to combine do gooding with a trip. It won't be a vacation as much a growth experience.

We are unsure if we can fit this in and the logistics since we can not take our two boys. Children must be 16 or older which are boys are not.

So, we have to figure out how to have the kids taken care for 2 weeks while we wander off to Nepal to spend a week building homes with Habitat for Humanity and then take about 3 days to tour. The rest of the time is taken up with just travel days.

We are still not convinced this is a good idea. The trip is in November 2014 and we have to sign up soon.

My biggest concerns are:

• How will we get the boys taken care of?
• What if something goes wrong at home with the kids?
• What if something goes wrong in Nepal?
• And many more.

Have you ever considered travelling without the kids for an extended time? How did it go? We have gone for 4 days before and that was great but this is 2 weeks.

Have you ever gone on a volunteering trip like this? How did it go?

Have you ever worked with Habitat for Humanity? How was that?

No Blerch Run, But Next Best Thing

Well, registration sold out in 29 minutes for the Beat The Blerch run. I was not lucky enough to get in.

This reminds me of the days when there would be a mad rush to buy tickets for a concert over the phone and you'd get dropped and have to call again. It can be very frustrating as sites lag, send you back, give errors, but that is how things are done today.

It really is the lucky ones that get into events.

Well, I was disappointed but I said, ok, well if you can't run, then might as well volunteer. So I will be volunteering as a Course Marshal to help keep people on track. I figure this will involve a deal of running/walking to my course location as I help out.

I have also asked to be on the 1/2 Marathon wait list and as such I will continue to train for the event, just in case.