a bunch of little happinesses

I have been working on several little projects and they all are making me smile. I've been really pleased with each of them and thought I'd share, in case you want to use them yourself! They are all inexpensive little projects either at my home or at school. I'll let you know how much each cost even!
#1. This was the priciest: NEW SHUTTERS! I am so pleased with these. They make the front of the house look so different. Now I konw I'm biased, but I think our house is the best looking on on our street. Our lawn is a little patchy color-wise, but we have bushes and flowers and a tree and now...SHUTTERS! It's adorable! Got them from Home Depot for about $50 total. #2. New flowers in the front yard. I bought huge hanging arrangements of zinnias (I think) for $5 each! (what a deal?!?!) Now how long can I keep them alive???

#3. My old planters are so ick. They are grayed and boring. And I kill everything I plant in them anyways...so more gray and ick. I was at Home Depot the other day and I saw all these new ceramic pots in bright yellow, lime green, aqua!! But at $20 a peice, I didn't want them so much. Instead, I bought a couple cans of plastic spray paint (about $3.50 each) and sprayed my old plastic pots. Too cute...and a splash of color for plain ol' green plants!

#4. Vines on the wall. I am working on the baby room right now. It will be all ready when God decides to send us someone to live in it! I began the vines that will eventually go all the way around the green room. I wasn't too keen on the dark, glossy green that Joe picked, but once it was on the wall, I LOVE it! Joe was really pleased with the results we got too. So far...only cost was a quart of paint, about $13. Now it's just gonnna take some time.

#5. Printmaking at school. We tried something new this year. When we did printmaking, we started by doing color bleeding with tissue paper squares and water (great activity if you have little kids!!) Then we rolled black tempra on famous art rubbing plates and made a print on the wet colored paper. They turned out AMAZING! You can get famous art rubbing plates for $7 from Sax Arts and Crafts.

#6. Symmetry studies. This was easy too. Take picture of your child. Print only half of it. Have them draw the other side. These are so cute. This is one from a 1st grader.

#7. Finally, we are doing some large scale art pieces for the school. They will be permenant parts of the front hallway very soon. We decided to do children's books and each of my 10 second grade classes did a different book. Each child did a pencil drawing and the one looking most like the actual book was blown up to be painted. Here is one of the first finished so far. Cost of these was just under $4 each. They measure 3 ft x 2ft. (MDF was bought and cut at Home Depot.)