October 09, 2003
Decorating á la Crayola
We made the trip to the local craft store yesterday to get some materials for a few projects. We got out of the craft store relatively cheaply–crayons, beads, leather lacing, cupcake liners (to melt old crayon chips). We also stopped in at Home Depot and snagged a whole range of paint chips. Tammy and I have recently thought about repainting most of our furniture, to lighten it up considerably. We are thinking more of a French Mediterranean country influence (if there is such a thing), pulling colors from sky and water. Blues and aquamarines with a lot of white and cream. Other colors only in spots and accents. All the paint chips were great (taped to every surface thinkable–including my laptop and my arm) but in the end it was Johann’s brand new “Crayola Wizard’s Giant Box of Crayons” to the rescue. Funny how it works out that way. I’m glad those paint chips were all free. Now, I wonder where we can find “Crayola Caribbean Green”, “Crayola Cerulean”, “Crayola Sky Blue”, and maybe a touch–just for accent mind you–of “Crayola Outer Space” in an interior latex?
The giant box of crayons has 120 different colors in it! Johann was in heaven this morning when he started playing with all those different colors. A realy nice bonus is that it comes with a cigar-box for keeping all those crayons in. Now we need to sort out all those older crayon pieces into similar colors so we can melt them down into crayon cupcakes to re-use.
Yesterday we also picked up some plants for the new apartment. We gave Johann fairly free-reign to choose some plants for himself. In the indoor plant area he was thrilled with all the ferns and ivy’s hanging from the rafters: “Mommy we’re walking through the jungle!” He discovered cactii there as well. After lightly pricking his finger he started describing plants as prickly or not prickly. Johann chose one fern, a pink polka-dotted plant and some sort of jade-like succulent–I’ll have to get the exact names from Tammy. We also recently bought one of the root-view type planters with some carrots and similar plants. Now Johann has his own plants that he can care for and water–something he has wanted now for a few weeks.
Yesterday’s outing also included selling two pieces of our old furniture to an antique and used furniture store. Now we have the room to set up Johann’s train table. While Johann napped after our trip, Tammy and I found all the pieces to the table and assembled it. Johann found it right after waking up. “Oh, thank you guys! This is so nice!” He spent all evening setting up a railway, and gathering all the animals on the table. We noticed that one of his elevated bridges is a turntable bridge just like the train bridge at the end of the estuary. Johann now wants to find a bascule drawbridge like the one here in downtown Mystic as well. Somehow I doubt they make a bascule bridge, but maybe we can make one.