our family do's

As part of my recent spring cleaning spree, I've been adding and updating a few decorative touches here and there around the house.  For the longest time, there has been one HUGE blank wall in my living room and I had no idea what to do with.  Should we hang photos there?  Artwork?  I was at a loss.  Then hubby and I talked about creating some art together to hang there.  We felt excited and creative.  We even bought canvases and paint.  We even hung those canvases on the wall in hopes that we would be inspired to create something awesome.  But then we got stuck and couldn't agree on what we wanted.  So for months, six blank white canvases hung on that wall...staring at me every time I walked in the room...mocking me.

I scoured Pinterest (imagine that) and found alot of great ideas.  The one that stood out to me was a sort of "house rules" turned art kind of thing.  With the bean becoming more and more a participating member of our family team and learning more about right and wrong, I thought introducing some family rules would be a good idea.  And what better way to start than to display it right on the wall of the room that we spend the most time in together.  But I didn't want it to be too "rule-y" if that makes sense.  I didn't want to hang a list of don'ts in our living room.  I didn't really want him to constantly see a list of things he wasn't allowed to do.  Instead, I wanted to list out the things that our family does...the values and traits that I want us all to have.  What I came up with is really more of a family pact or covenant.  It's our family do's.

Here's how I made it happen:

• First, I came up with our list of do's.  These are some of the most important things I want to encourage the bean to do and be.  I laid everything out the way I wanted it in Word and then printed it on six different pages.
• Then the hubby and I decided on paint colors.  This was easy...we just went with colors that we already have in our house.
• I painted the canvases green as the background color.

• I then traced my printed words onto each canvas using carbon paper.  This took a while because I'm a perfectionist and didn't want to have to do a lot of touch-up painting to cover up any errant lines that I made.
• Then came the task of filling in the traced letters with brown paint.  I'm going to be honest...this took forever.  I think it took me about 8 hours or so (spread out over a few days) to paint in all the letters.  I used the stiffest, tiniest paintbrush I could find and just went to work.  Again, I didn't want to have to do alot of touch-up at the end to fix any mistakes, so I took my time to make sure I stayed inside the lines.  I did have to do a little touching up with green paint at the end, but it didn't take long at all.

I love the finished product.  Up close it's not exactly perfect...it definitely has a hand-painted look to it.  But to me it's really the words that matter most anyway.  I love seeing our family covenant when I walk in the room instead of that big blank wall.  It just makes me smile.