DIY Projects in the Works

I've never been one to have a hard time coming up with ideas or finding inspiration.  On the contrary, I always have far more ideas and projects in my head than I have time to do them.  Which results in many ideas getting pushed aside, or "thrown in the vault" as I like to say.  But every once in a while, an idea hits me and I feel compelled to drop everything and do it.  This has happened to me twice recently, and although neither was a completely original idea, I was so struck with inspiration that I immediately started work on them.

The first was this outdoor music wall, which I saw pop up in my Facebook news feed a couple of months ago:  http://www.filthwizardry.com/2010/05/music-wall-rip-music-tree.html

What a brilliant idea! And so easy, too.  And I knew we had the perfect spot for it, so two days later I was already gathering junk from our basement to do it.  It's still a work in progress, but here's a little sneaky peeky:

Outdoor music wall, in progress

I still have some more things I want to add to this, but it's a pretty good start!  And literally the only thing I purchased for this was some spray paint to liven it up.  Can't beat that!  Or can you??  (Ha!  See what I did there?  Haha, eh, ahem.)

Moving on to the second idea...  Several months ago, I got the urge to paint our van.  No, not have it repainted, but to paint it myself.  Crazy?  Maybe a little, but it wouldn't be the first time I have painted a vehicle - I had a car in high school and college that I painted twice: once with random designs and the other with the solar system and stars.  In any case, I have been thinking about this off and on for many months, but hadn't really come up with a plan of how I wanted to paint it.

///Fast forward to a couple weeks ago///

I was looking at one of those silly buzzfeed articles - you know the ones:  "30 Amazing Photos That Will Change Your Outlook on Life" or "16 Animals That Are So Cute You Will Cry" or some other nonsense, seemingly always in a tidy little list format.  I see these pop up in my Facebook news feed frequently, and I rarely click on them.  But for some reason, I happened to click on one a couple weeks ago - I don't even remember what the article was now, but somewhere in the ridiculous list was a photo of a car painted with chalkboard paint.  When I first saw the pic I kind of casually thought, "Haha, that would be fun." But after a day or so, I kept gravitating back to the idea and thought, "No, wait, that really would be fun!"  And it was the perfect solution to my indecision of how to paint the van - if I painted it with chalkboard paint, we could draw on it and keep changing it! 

Sneak peek at the chalkboard van!

It didn't take me long to start gathering supplies and begin work.  And of course, as soon as I got a little section done, we had to try it out!  Even though this is a fairly big project, two weeks after deciding to do it, I'm already half way done.  When inspiration strikes like this, it really is a force to be reckoned with!  Now I just have to wait out a couple of rainy days so I can finish it.  Back to indoor projects for now!