I woke up on July 4th and the thought hit me: I forgot to make those tee shirts I wanted to for the party today! A couple weeks before, I had pinned this ADORABLE shirt.
Original post and tutorial here. (It's better than mine--especially if you didn't forget most of the supplies like I did! Check it out!)
But on the morning of the party, I realized I had the shirts, but no fabric paint. And I couldn't My options were 1) forget the shirts or 2) make it work.
I chose to make it work!
Here's what you need:
paint--ANY paint. Even house paint would work. I should probably be close to the usual colors
kids hands
any paint brush (I used a 1-inch foam brush that was left next to the sink)
a shirt in either red or white
Step 1: Put a stool next to the sink for little kids. Paint the left hand liberally with blue paint. Immediately press the hand down on the shirt. In the corner where the stars go.
Lift it off, and usher the kid to the sink to wash it off, STAT.
2) To make pretty lines, some masking tape would be nice. But all I could find were the foam brushes, so I painted 5 messy lines across the shirts to make the flag stripes.
I almost got worried there weren't as many as the real flag. But the truth? NO ONE WILL NOTICE!
Walmart was out of little boy's white shirts, so I got Eli a red one. Which is actually a good thing, since he's the one most likely to dart out into traffic. This way, he's more visible! (Safety first) Other color options: 1)turquoise and white on pink, 2)black and white on grey, 3)anything you want...because our flag, is pretty recognizable.
Step 3) There is no step three. This is the easiest project you'll do all year.
And seriously, even if you post a pic and tell people how little time it took, and that you used the wrong paint, other moms will still fell bad about themselves because they didn't get around to doing their own.
Which leads me to this small service announcement:
Moms, give yourself a BREAK! If you want to make a flag tee for your little one, but it's July 18th or December 26th, do it anyway! The calendar is not the boss of you!! And if you want to make your kid a flag tee and you don't have the right supplies, MAKE IT ANYWAY. Pinterest is not the boss of you!! I post these projects on my blog to remind myself that I actually got something done, when my actual mental list (I lost my paper list) is a mile and a half long. I post these things, because maybe you want to make something, and I can show you how few steps there actually are. That you can do it! I don't post these things to show off. Or make other moms feel bad. We can't let social media do that to us, when there's so much potential for fun, inspiration, and encouragement.
So grab that stained tee shirt out of the laundry pile, slap on some paint, and party like it's 1776.
Happy Independence Day, y'all!!
