One of the gifts my Mom gave my children was a ‘Painting Rocks’ kit. Great marketing, six medium sized rocks, a book suggesting some animal paintings, and six thimbles of paint with a couple brushes! And while it may indeed be great marketing, that didn’t take away any of the fun of covering the dining room table with newspaper and painting those very rocks. Good family time.

So much fun that I thought I’d buy some more rocks, so off we went to Lowes last weekend. Lots of rocks, but too small to be interesting, but now I’m stuck, having suggested we’ll paint more rocks. If you’ve got kids you can picture the minor panic that hits you, the ‘is this going to be a thing?’ and ‘why did I open my mouth without knowing I could get the rocks?’. I start thinking about what else we could paint and where else I might find rocks, and the first idea that hits me is ceramic tiles. We go look at the tiles, not very expensive if you buy a couple, but doesn’t seem to resonate with the kids. They’ve survived not finding rocks and I remember that I have some leftover tile at home, so we end for home.

We dug around in the storage room and found the tile, no problem. The tile is standard gloss tile, some in regular sized and some in rectangular trim size. Wasn’t sure about the gloss holding paint, but it goes on not bad and seems fine once it dries.

Turning kids loose with paint is just asking for a mess, and I’ve still got some child left in me so I want to paint too! As you can see my painting skills are about on par with the kids, which in no way detracted from the fun we had with the painting.

Probably lots of lessons here, but one worth considering; you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.