When you old... this is the type of 'Pot' you get excited over.

I've been doing so much to our home in the last few months to make it feel more like 'me' and less like a yard sale threw up. Decorating and cooking have always been my thing but the last several years I've been more worried about the kids wearing clean clothes, having good food to eat and making sure once the kids leave the house my husband and I still love one another. All important jobs, yes... but important to is wanting to be in my home and looking around and feeling proud of it.

Here is a recent 'to do' project I can not check off of my list. Yeah! BTW, my mother taught me to always write 'Eat Chocolate' as the first thing on my 'To Do' list so I can check at least one thing off each day. Love that woman... she's just so darn smart (and I love chocolate... score)!

Dollar General has all of their garden items at 50% off. I went there to buy a few items and walked out with several projects... all of which I was able to complete in one evening. I knew I wanted to spruce up the front of our very bland ranch house so I purchased several item, many of them clay pots for only a few dollars each. My style is very flea market find meets cottage (I have three kids, three dogs and a husband... if it's not already distressed it will be soon after it arrives at my home) and they perfect clay pots just did not fit in to the look I needed to have.

First, I spray painted the pot robin's egg blue (allowed the paint to dry) then a good coat of Heirloom white. After they heirloom white was dry, I used the stone spray I had purchased 10 years ago on clearance for $1.99. I was a bit worried it would not work but to my surprise it sprayed out just as it was brand new. Here is what it looked like after I was done with the first few steps...

Not to horribly bad but still not the look I was going for so I pulled out the big guns to help tackle this project... Meet the Might Mouse Sander. I have three sanders (small mouse, might mouse and orbital) but the Mighty Mouse is my favorite because it's powerful and yet easy to hold onto. It may seem odd to sand a clay pot covered in two layers of spray paint along with a coating of 'stone spray' but at this stage in my life... noting is odd anymore. Hells bells.... let's just do this thing!

I had run out of mouse sandpaper pads so I used the orbital 60 grit pads and they worked fine. I sanded all of the edges to make the look more worn and made sure the sander went through all of the colors of paint in several of the areas. I wanted a really old, rustic pot... like one that had set outside in Italy for the last 50 years. I sanded, looked to see what I was coming up with then sanded again. When I was finished  with the look I thought I wanted all you have to do it take a damp cloth and wipe it off as the water collects the dust and old paint. Just keep sanding until you get the look you like, there is not any way to mess this project up as it's what you like best.