We’re getting some decorating done whilst winter keeps me indoors.
Last time we were decorating we’d just had this old house renovated and there were small bods about wanting to ‘help’! Wanting to experiment with fingers in paint pots, paint their limbs with it and do some ‘decorating’ of their own by drawing pictures on freshly painted walls. Both children ended up with patches of paint on them. Some of the walls ended up with patches of paint off them. We all had patchy patience, streaky hair and paint stained fingers – although theirs were because they literally painted their nails – with paint!
We only got a very little done at a time as small beings needed attending to, reading to, feeding, home educating although decorating is an education in itself, cuddling and generally reassuring that the house would end up whole again…eventually.
This time round it was SO much easier. We can roller walls as quick as anything. We can leave opened tins of paint in reach without danger of them being spilt, we can concentrate on edges and not be mindful of innocent sabotage or worry that a bit of individual and very original but unsolicited artwork is taking place behind the toilet door.
Yep – so much easier, quicker, less messy….
….I much preferred it first time round!
(You can read how it all happened first time round – whilst home educating – in A Funny Kind Of Education. See the My Books page for extracts.)
Ross Mountney's Notebook 
Ah yes, I hear you. My husband was painting our bedroom on Saturday morning and hoped to teach our teen son some life skills but we couldn’t prise him out of bed. Gone are the days when he was eager to help.
Thank you for visiting my site last week. Always lovely to get a new visitor.
Thanks for your comment Trish. Nothing better than the life skills lessons…what I want to know is who taught mine to lie in bed all morning! 🙂
Yes, it’s amazing what a different world we live in with the children are small – we have to make sure that we don’t lose the magic when they are grown up; therefore, I suggest splattering himself with paint and see what emerges.
Absolutely!