Day 99

Several weeks ago, I mentioned the girls and I were working on  an upcycling project.  My plan was to dazzle you with a finished product in a later post.  Well, approximately four weeks later, we are still working on it and at current rate, we may be forever.

Instead, here is the update.

We are upcycling a couple of doll beds (we started with one, but now have two thanks to a recent hand-me-down)

The back story is that Kayla, my oldest really wanted a particular American Girl doll bed.  And, Kelsey, my youngest, pretty much wants anything her older sister does.

Here is a picture of the doll bed.

Of course,  I told her she couldn’t have it.  At which point, she screwed up her face in disgust and whined to me that it wasn’t fair, she hadn’t agreed to The Simple Year.  At which point, I very calmly pointed out that it didn’t matter WHAT year it was, we were never going to buy a $225 DOLL BED…ever. (OK, maybe I said it somewhere between calm and extremely irritated)   For those of you unfamiliar with the American Girl Doll line of  molded plastic, it is obscenely priced.  And, apparently people will pay that kind of coin, because I noticed on the website that this particular bed was on back order until September.

I did tell her when she graduated from college and got a job she could buy her own.  Which, I suppose, would be a little creepy if she still wanted a doll bed in her early 20’s. But there are lots of people that collect those Precious Moment figurines, well into middle age. To each his own, I suppose.

Instead, I promised we would make the dolls equally fabulous beds.  I found one doll crib at a thrift store ($1.99) and was given one by an older cousin.  Both just needed some minor repair, a coat of paint and some new bedding.   With our free paint, we started the project last weekend.

Busy at work on our project

About 20 minutes into our project, after about 72 consecutive days of no precipitation, it began to rain.  We were about halfway through the job, so I carried the beds to the garage and told the kids we would work on them later.

And then two incidents happened.

The first:

I left the paint cans outside.  The lid was clearly not secured properly on the lavender paint.  The next day, I found the can upturned with what appeared to be a huge purple Easter egg painted on the concrete.  Now, I need more paint AND have to figure out how to remove the pastel image from the porch.

The next:

I was working at my computer and out of the corner of my eye, I notice Gypsy (my friend’s visiting dog), wander by sporting what appeared to be a magenta mohawk.  Confused I rushed out to find my six year old had somehow managed to pry the lid off the other can of paint (this from a kid who can’t even unwrap her own cheese stick) and was merrily stirring the can sloshing paint everywhere.  I’m not sure how the dog figured into the equation, perhaps she got too close or perhaps she was a specific target.  As far as I know, she is still sporting a faint pink stripe.

I have temporarily shelved the project (which sounds much better than “gave up”) until we can secure more paint and I regain my wits, which might be long time.

*If you didn’t get a chance to read how we secured the paint you can check out my previous post here.