For the Living Room Wall

Although it's not much fun trying to organize stuff, sorting through trash and finding an actual liveable place for everything and buying ever more of those freaking clear plastic bins, I do have to say that the girls and I are finding a lot of fun in rediscovering the stuff we've had for ages and just forgot about because it was shoved in the closet on top of something else that was behind some other thing. That's not why I got the stuff in the first place, just to forget about it and never use it, and it probably goes a long way to explain why we have such a ridiculous amount of stuff in the first place.

Because as soon as the girls saw the small stack of stretched canvasses that I bought on big sale a few months ago and then put in the closet meaning to give them to the girls to paint someday soon and then forgot about, they were both all, "I want to paint!"

And seeing, now, a segment of stuff that perhaps wouldn't have to go back into the closet after all, as well as an opportunity to collect all the little bottles of acrylic, oil, and tempera paints that happen to be stuffed here and there in the closet, I said, "You betcha!"
We collect our empty egg cartons primarily to keep paint colors separate when we're working, but I thought the girls would like some experience in blending, so this time I gave them a plate. I have to admit that it resulted in some finished works that are a little on the monochromatic side, primarily of the "mud" tone of colors--
--but who cares, it was fun. And priceless to enjoy the look of deep concentration on my little mud-making girls' faces:

I had sort of planned these canvasses to be hung on our own living room wall (and I had sort of planned that Matt and I would paint a couple ourselves, but the girls were on a roll), but the youthful declaration was that they would be Christmas presents. Chasing Cheerios does these cute handprint canvas paintings that I had been contemplating making as presents, but original artwork, signed by the artist, always makes the nicest gift, don't you think?

So there you go--organizing, entertaining, educating, AND we got a couple of Christmas presents done, to boot.