It Takes Two

I love creating things.  And I love watching my son do the same.  So it makes perfect sense that some of my very favorite projects happen when we come together and work on them as a team.  Our latest joint endeavor was this hand-painted wooden sign.  You may remember that Noah’s favorite “toy” lately isn’t a toy at all…it’s trash!  He’s using empty food and drink containers to create his own little grocery store.  (If you missed it, see my Green Grocer post).  Well, the other day we were in Michael’s (again) and Noah decided he wanted to buy a plain wooden plaque and paint it as a sign for his store.  Since he wanted it to have words, “Noah’s Market,” he couldn’t do it all independently, so we decided he’d do the background and I’d handle the lettering.  Here’s how we did it:

– wooden plaque, any size (ours is 9×11)

– paints (acrylic work best, but I usually have Noah use washable kids’ paint)

– various sizes of paintbrushes, including round sponge brush

– mod podge

STEP 1: Noah gave the entire thing a base coat of blue paint.  If you know Noah, the color is no surprise.

STEP 4: I lightly penciled in the letters, then painted over them with black paint.  Then, I dipped the bottom end of the brush in black paint and added dot accents to each letter.

STEP 5: I also outlined the painted center section with black paint.

STEP 6: After paint is completely dry, I added a coat of Mod Podge over the whole thing to give it shine and seal it, protecting it from whatever might happen to it in Noah’s room!

Here it is displayed on his grocery store.  You may notice we moved the store from the basement to his own room, primarily in the hopes that when he wakes up at 6, he’ll play with it for awhile before running in to wake up Mama.  No luck yet…yawn.

Meanwhile, when we were setting it up in his room, we had to move out the changing table to make a space for the cube organizer.  (We’re also hoping this will be a potty training incentive…again, no luck yet).  As Noah contemplated what was going on, he turned to his daddy and announced, “Babies have changing tables.  Big boys have grocery stores.  In their roooooom.”

In other news, I finally got to put the personalized pillow I made yesterday in Noah’s room and boy does it look cute with all his other bedding!  I’m thinking I might see if I have enough left of any of the other colors to whip up another one and put an “L” on it for him so he has both initials.

Most importantly, the new pillow has been Noah-tested, Noah-approved.  Who could ask for more than that?

See that smile?  It melts my heart.  I’ve made a lot of things in thirty years, but that little man right there is hands-down the best thing I (with a little help from hubby and a lot of help from the Heavenly Father) have ever been a part of creating.