Some days just leave you smiling. Yesterday was one of those days. Once a week I try to have two of my grandkids over for art lessons. If you just envisioned easels and cute children in white smocks and French berets start over here. The art I come up with involves found items… like toilet paper tubes and Amazon boxes. I save packing peanuts, empty jars, and bottle caps. A couple weeks ago we gathered colorful leaves from the yard and talked about fall. Back inside we did our best to decoupage our collection to the outside of empty jelly jars. The idea was to place a candle inside so the light could shine through the colored leaves. It looked great on Pinterest.

What a hot mess. Those stupid leaves would NOT stick to the glass no matter how much Mod Podge we applied. Eventually we gave up and just painted our jars. The next week, I found a couple little wreaths I’d squirreled away from the Dollar Tree. Made with very thin copper colored leaves, I decided we should try again. We gathered our painted jars, slathered them with sticky medium, then added the fake leaves. Poor Jesse’s kept popping off so he carefully pressed them down with his little fingers hoping to steady them long enough to stay. After a bit, he released his grip carefully.

“Aw man….!” He held his hands up. They were neatly covered with copper colored leaves. I wish I had thought to take a picture. The kids laughed, cleaned up the mess and followed me to the laundry room. “So much for art lessons,” I thought to myself.

Together they hopped up on the dryer to “help”. Marie spotted an old dish filled with bottle caps. Included in the treasure trove was a shoe horn. I don’t know why.

She proceeded to make a game of launching the caps from the shoe horn like a catapult. Together she and Jesse played for well over half an hour. And laughed… for some reason that tickled their funny bone. Who knew a shoe horn and bottle caps could be so much fun.

While they did that I pulled out plan B: my trusty stash of toilet paper tubes and cardboard boxes. We sat at the table making houses and restaurants and churches and roads until we had an entire village. Of course we needed a dock and boats with sails. Plastic straws and paper napkins combined for some pretty impressive water craft. Jesse created a drawbridge like he saw at the beach. From a pink box Marie completed a make-up shop with shelves full of product. But when she folded it over to make the building everything was upside down.

“Oh well,” she declared. “I guess it can be a bat cave.” With a black marker she colored in all the bottles to make bats.

Today I am still smiling. We had so much fun. Sure, there were plenty of Pinterest fails. But maybe it was an art lesson that will last longer than learning to color within the lines.