A few months ago, a friend and neighbor moved back to the United States from our little base here in Japan. Alas, this is one of the many downsides to military life–your friends are always leaving you!

The upside to her moving? We inherited a number of toys from her boys, including this Little Tikes play place.

I believe we’re the third or fourth family to inherit it on our block! It is perfectly functional, but it was definitely a bit sun faded. Okay, a LOT sun faded. I remembered this play house I had seen over on Apartment Therapy, so I headed over to our hardware store on base and picked up some Krylon Fusion spray paint for plastics.

My fabulous hubby took the play place apart and then we cleaned it off. You can really see how sun faded it is in this picture.

In the most illogical move I’ve made in awhile, I chose to start spray painting the play place in my brand new dress in a crazy dust storm–sometimes when I’m working on a project I don’t make the best choices. Somehow I managed to avoid getting paint on myself. I’m still not quite sure how that happened! Anywho, here’s how it ended up:

I LOVE how it looks. We didn’t have a wide selection of paint colors here in Japan, so I stuck with red, white, and beige, and then I left the wheel on the play place the original blue. For some reason, it was the only thing on the whole play place that wasn’t sun faded and it worked well with the color I chose.

So, do you have any plastic patio furniture or plastic kids toys that have seen better days? Summer is coming, so spruce up those pieces today! But go ahead and put on your painting clothes…just in case you aren’t as lucky as I was!

As promised, I’m posting a tutorial for the super easy house numbers I made. To refresh your memory…here are the lovely numbers we have indentifuing our unit number. I know you’re  jealous.

As much as I loved these, I really wanted something a little more attractive.

I bought a cheap 8×10 frame, some silver spray paint, and I used some scrapbooking numbers and letters I already had on hand.

I removed the glass from the frame and stuck on the scrapbook numbers/letters.

Then I just spray painted the glass silver, let it dry, and peeled the numbers off:

At this point I also sprayed the glass with a sealant to  help prevent scratches and stand up to the elements. Just pop the glass back in the frame and you’re done! It’s that easy!

I’m so happy that I don’t have to look at those ugly house numbers for 2 more years!

I pride myself in being a fairly domestic person. I love baking, cooking, decorating, organizing, and yes, sometimes even cleaning (yes, I know I’m a freak). But clearly I’m a failure in one department: gardening (ironic as I come from a long line of farmers). You may remember when I tried to plant my front beds back in CA…well I killed those. And this little vegetable garden? Well it stayed alive for awhile while the Hubby was taking care of it, but he left and then I killed those plants, too.

So I am pretty darn excited that I have kept the plants I’ve planted here in my front bed alive for FOUR WEEKS! Clearly I just needed to cut down the number of hours I work a week from 40 to 20 in order to keep a garden alive. Just kidding…I’ve really just been watering them every day. Who knew water was so important to keeping plants alive?

I also spruced up the front porch area of our townhouse a little. Here’s the before picture with just our doormat and a wreath:

I’ve been on the hunt for a small bench to go here (kicking myself for not getting one at Target before we moved…oh Target how I miss you so!). I found one in early May that I liked at a home store here but it was $200. Eek. I was finally making peace with the idea of splurging on it, when I went to Costco (yes, we DO have a Costco here!) and found a bench I liked almost as much for $50. Sold! So here’s the front porch now (please ignore my reflection…):

Oh, I also made those little house numbers (because I couldn’t STAND the icky ones that were there before). I’ll show you how I made those later this week. And last but not least, you may remember that we have this funky little outdoor storage area right at the front of our house:

That storage is vital for bikes/strollers/trash cans, but I hate that you see it right when you walk up to our house. So I bought a few magnetic clips, a canvas drop cloth, and a few hanging baskets…and this is what I came up with:

I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. Ollie apparently is, too, because he goes out and plays here every chance he gets. Yes, Miles likes it out here, too, but at the moment I took this picture he was pushing his walker down the sidewalk, and nearly into the street. I am such a fabulous mother…

*Full disclosure, one of the plants in these hanging baskets–the one on the left–is dying. I think it’s because the baskets cause most of the water to leak out. People with green thumbs: do you have any thoughts on how to prevent plants in hanging baskets from drying out?