Painted Twigs

08/20/2018

Over the course of the summer, I have slowly been adding to the decor of my house. I’ve been removing odd things that are cracked or broken and have been replacing them with nicer things. Since I’ve been doing this all summer, my kids have noticed what I like and dislike and they even give suggestions on what I should put in place of the previous item removed.

Since my children have shown quite an interest in helping to decorate our house, I have given them access to my Pinterest account and they’ve all become little masters on how to use Pinterest, better than me in fact. They’ve saved a bunch of ideas for not only themselves but for me too.

Their latest idea that we actually did the other day, was creating a twig bouquet. One day out on our daily walk they collected little sticks and leaves and brought them home with us. They brought all the twigs inside because they wanted to make them “pretty”. So in the house, we went with these sticks.

The kids grabbed all the paint supplies (they know to grab a newspaper, change into their messy clothes as we call them, and to make sure all the supplies are at the table before starting). Once settled at the table they grabbed the colours they wanted and began squirting the colours onto their pallets. Picking up their paintbrushes they began to colour the twigs in bright and complementary colours.

They decorated the twigs in stripes, polka dots, however, they wanted. In fact, they spent an entire afternoon painting these sticks for the house. Once they were finished we let the sticks dry. The next day they all came to me and wanted me to put their twigs somewhere in the house. I grabbed a decent size bouquet for them to put all their twigs in and then my eldest grabbed the vase and set it in the middle of our coffee table.

Although the craft was simple, I think it gave my kids joy to help me redecorate the house. Letting them help gave me more ideas and helped me children realize that they can make contributions too.