I liked the song Locked Away so much better when I thought the lyrics were “If I showed you my floors, would you still love me the same” instead of “If I showed you my flaws.” I laughed out loud with delight the first time I (mis)heard the song, thinking, “Now THIS is a love song I can identify with!” (If I were dating again, I would be very anxious about my dates meeting my floors.)

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It took me awhile to do this, but it’s working great: putting MOST of the beans for a batch of chili into the blender. I love chili, and the children don’t mind it but they don’t like the beans. So now I put about a can and a half of beans into the blender with some water (you can instead use the tomato base of the chili, if you want to), and then putting the remaining half-can of beans into the chili as themselves. The children pick around the intact beans, but they’re still eating the ground-up beans.

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I have recently been experimenting with fabric paint, and I heartily recommend it, especially if your child has an obsessive interest in something hard to find on t-shirts. (I’d wanted to try one of those kits where you can make an iron-on patch with your printer, but those are for inkjet printers and ours is a laser printer.) Multi-packs of boys’ white undershirts are on good back-to-school sales this time of year, so it’s a great time for low-cost experimentation; if a shirt totally fails, use the rest of it to practice painting or try out paint colors, or cut it up and use it as cleaning rags.

I laundered the shirts first, with no fabric softener (fabric softener can make the fabric more resistant to paint). I looked online for simple images, then printed them out and traced over them with a fat black Sharpie marker, to make them easier to see; then I put the paper inside the t-shirt. It doesn’t show through a LOT, but it shows through enough for rough tracing purposes. I printed out a second copy so I also had something to glance over at for reference.

Speaking of paper, put paper inside the shirt even if you’re NOT tracing: otherwise, the paint can seep through the front layer and right through to the back.

I’m using the Tulip fabric paints, basically by random chance (I found a couple in a clearance section, and then later sought out the same brand); I don’t know if they’re the best or not, but I’m happy with them so far. I bought the individual colors I wanted, but they also come in multi-packs like this one if you’re not sure where the creative muse will lead. I buy the “Slick” ones for outlines and lettering: it’s very similar to piping frosting onto a cake. I have the “Soft” ones for filling in the outlines (after the outlines dry): this is the kind of paint you squeeze out onto a piece of tinfoil or something, and then use with a paintbrush. I’ve also used the Slick ones for filling in outlines (using the tip to spread the color around) if what I want is a shiny look, like for eyes or sunglasses. One time I wanted to make a color lighter, so I mixed a Soft color with a Slick white, and that worked just fine and came out looking soft/matte, not slick/shiny.

It helps if you can make yourself feel shruggy about the whole thing. Things will happen: like, when I’m carefully piping an outline, sometimes there will be a sudden bubble of fabric paint, or my hand will shake a little. These things feel like they matter a LOT during the MAKING of the shirt—but once it’s made, and you’re looking at it from a distance, they matter little or none. Some mistakes can be covered over: hey, let’s put a flower here! Some mistakes are only obvious if someone knows what the original picture looked like. I recommend persevering: if it IS ruined, there’s little to lose by continuing, and you’re getting good practice, and maybe it’ll turn out not to be ruined after all.

The paint needs to dry for four hours. We have cats who like to walk on things, so I put cooling racks over the designs. Our cats don’t like the feeling of cooling racks on their paw-pads, and this also reminded other members of the household that they should NOT TOUCH the tempting, tempting paint. A cooling rack can also keep your hand up off the shirt if you accidentally paint it in such a way that you run out of places to rest your hand, not that I know this from doing it multiple times.

I’m getting bored with painting on white shirts, so I’m going to be keeping an EAGLE EYE on end-of-summer clearance sales. I remember in other years seeing solid-colored shirts for a dollar or two. I’m going to check Goodwill, too; a lot of times they have well-worn shirts for $3.00, but sometimes it’s shirts in really good shape for $1.50. I’m especially interested in finding some girl-cut t-shirts for Elizabeth.