Did I bite off more than I can chew?

Ahhhh...So, I decided to paint and boy has it been an adventure. I have learned so much, but am so overwhelmed. The first thing I have learned is that I will never take 3 children to Home Depot right after school ever again. I really am not fond of the place alone, so add 3 tired, hungry kids to the mix and it is not enjoyable. Today Spencer fell asleep in the car picking Jordan up, so consequently he was a bear in the store and cried most of the time. He continued this behavior until bed time. It was funny today thought because there was a guy in line with me when I was getting the paint, and he entertained the kids that day-really nice. Well, I got there today to do some returns and the same guy was in line returning something as well. He said "we have to stop meeting like this."

I thought I had everything, but unfortunately I will have to make one more trip the morning with just Lanny. I have such a hard time with a couple things painting. First of all, how on earth do you make the corners look nice with an accent wall? I don't have the most steady of hands, so am finding this an extremely challenging task. In addition, I am struggling with making the stokes of the painting right up to the ceiling match up with the roller part.....ugh. Hence another trip to the dreaded Home Depot for a tiny little roller. I bought another item today that isn't working well....ugh...why am I doing this...oh yeah because despite the eventual flaws of the final project, it looks awesome so far and is so clean. I do see why people hire painter!!! If only I had a fund for home improvements that never went dry!!

And now to the dining room table. I figured that since the dining room was already a mess, I would take on another dining room project. Due to much wear and tear of our busy family, our dining room table is in great need of a face lift-a couple water spots, marker spot on bare wook because of lots of peeling varnish-which by the way isn't too fun for playing with playdough and elimintates the possibility of rolling out cookie dough. So, I found this resin protectant stuff-similar to the stuff on some restaurant tables and decided to get it. The saga of the sanding begins. I started to sand with the sand paper I had and wore it out. I borrowed a sander from the neighbor and it just wasn't taking it off very fast-I got the most coarse paper you can get for that brand of sander. It was very frustrating. So I wrestled with the idea of buying a more powerful sander....I spent way too much time waffling back and forth in the sander section of Home Depot not once, but twice this week. In the end I just bought a $4.00 pack of the most coarse sand paper they have, and lo and behold with some elbow grease it has worked better than the sander paper!! I am almost ready to apply the protectant, just have to finish the leaf and do a final sanding with the fine sand paper. This where the sander will be helpful:). I forgot all about the leaf, and am so glad I remembered it or it would have looked really funny if we ever needed to use it.

Today I spraypainted a little picnic table we picked up this past summer.....finally. I ran out of spray paint, but it is entirely too cold to do that. I just feel bad there is not a patch of blue grass in the common area behind our house. Hopefully it doesn't catch the eye of some big wig in our HOA.....