Thinking About Painting

When we moved to this house 5 years ago we painted everything: the ceilings, the walls, inside the closets. Actually, I should say that we had many people help us get the painting done. I was on bedrest at first, and then had a 2.5 lb. baby in the hospital for 5 weeks. I didn't do any painting in those days.

But, alas, 5 years has passed, we have twice as many children as we did when we moved here, and the poor choice of flat paint for much of our living areas is screaming for mercy.

Right now our walls display a combination of dings, patched dings needing to be sanded, permanent marker scribbles that will require KILZ to get rid of, crayon, pencil, pen, dried boogers, dirt, finger and hand prints, foot prints, and who knows what else. Thankfully, all of those are spread throughout the house rather than all together in a concentrated area. But, you know, the time has come that we need to plan to repaint. So, think is what we have been doing! (thinking's free!)

Aside from needing a fresh coat of paint everywhere, I am seriously plotting and planning to do some embellishments. As I have told you in past posts, I have had a longstanding problem with making my homes really personalized, and I've been working on that this year with my various window-paintings and door decoupage projects. I think the next thing I'm going to work my way up to is words.

Huh?

Words, I say!

For 5 years I have had ideas to paint/stencil messages on my walls. Inspirational words. Bible verses. Blessings. Welcomes. I found this cool site that has given me some good ideas, too.

Some of my ideas include:

Repainting the front door and having "welcome" on it sort of like this idea here. I also want to paint on my steps coming up to the house.

As people come into the house I would like to have something that says, "Peace to all who enter here" or some other welcome blessing.

I am thinking of a larger section over the front door so that you would not only notice when you are in the house, but particularly as you leave, that says, "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and give you peace forever." Maybe on the back of the door.

The first idea I had that I still want to do is to write a border around my kitchen that says "Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table." which is from Psalm 128. Maybe not with the "thys" though. I just cut and pasted that from Bible.com.

Another idea I've had for a long time is to border the living areas, or at least our living room, with inspirational words like
peace
snooze
laugh
smile
dance
giggle
listen
be still
share
play
kiss
hug
love
breathe
sing

I would like to do some fun things in the bathrooms with words like SMILE or SHINE or something like that. We'll have to see what I come up with when the time comes.

The Wonderful Graffiti site really looks like a great way to do it, except that I think it would end up being pretty expensive for me to get all of the stuff I want from them. So, maybe I'll have to learn to stencil and see what I can come up with. I've been told again and again that it's easy....so it must be. Right? :) Free hand is a possibility, too, but I don't think I'll get the look I want that way.

You can be sure of 2 things in relation to this post:
1. This is more about thinking and less about doing. Stuff like this takes me a pretty long time to get to, usually. So don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.
2. I'll share pictures when it does. :)