At this point in my short blogging life, I have uploaded over 1,400 pictures to this thing. With nearly 200 posts, I’m beginning to forget what I’ve written about, what I’ve photographed and what pictures never actually made it to the computer. Yes, my memory cards are currently housing something like 8,000 pictures. I’ve heard many people who maintain blogs say this and I shall repeat, the picture part is the most time consuming. For every one picture you need to post, you take like 10-15 and choose the best one.

Since I am a weekend warrior, sometimes I am so inspired on Saturdays that I take a million pictures and think of a million blog topics. Then Monday hits, as well as “real life” and sometimes I just don’t have the energy and can’t even remember what I was planning to say. The short summary to all of this rambling? Sometimes my projects fall through the cracks.

Back in March/April when we were working on the office full steam, I took on a little project that I forgot to tell you about. It involves this guy.

Yes there are two different sizes of gumballs in there. When we replenished the stash we bought the wrong size. Whoops. But anyway, we received this amazing gift from Mike’s brother and his wife about 5 years ago. We love the the novelty and unexpectedness of it. I have always adored gumball machines, especially the giant one from Family Double Dare in the early 90s. Remember? No? It’s okay I found a picture!

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Everytime I see Mark Somers on the Food Network it just feels wrong. Also in the 90s, way back when I was in elementary school, I remember seeing a girl who was dressed as a gumball machine for Halloween. I was so jealous because it was obviously the coolest costume out there. It looked like this, but with balloons for gumballs…

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Some girls aspire to wear lingerie and animal ears, I aim for a garbage bag and a sheet. I think that explains a lot…

While we loved our gumball machine, we thought that it was time to give him a makeover. So I (very nervously) disassembled him.

Taped off his important parts…

Then I sprayed him. I sprayed him bright green…

I understand that he is likely not food safe at this point. We never really ate the gumballs from him anyway. I imagined a green machine with bright white gumballs. He took a while to dry and when I removed the tape, I discovered a little mishap.

My taping missed a few spots around the metal (the red on the plastic piece where the gum comes out is actually printed there). I planned to touch this up with some acrylic paint in the closest match possible. I knew I could never spray it any closer than I did!

It seemed genius, perfect. And then I put it in the office.

Not so bad, but then I stepped away.

And away some more.

Then Mike and I declared this project a flop. Maybe not a full and complete flop, but we don’t like it. The green is too John Deere, which is funny because they sell John Deere spray paint and I purposely avoided it. With the addition of our white chairs, we decided another pop of white in this little corner would be perfect. Actually I think I sprayed this the same day we bought our chairs, so yes, it took me nearly 4 months to post my failure. Not because I was keeping it secret, but because I wanted to report on a final product before posting.

I bought some high gloss white spray paint soon after this mishap, but then life got crazy and the last few months have been a blur of coffee, textbooks and Pinterest. The office still looks exactly as it did in the pictures above, but maybe I need to conquer a small project to satisfy my painting itch. Can of white spray paint? I’m coming for you.

That is of course, after I pull the 4 foot weed in my front yard. Yes neighbors, we still live here….

…Wait do my neighbors read this? Hello, is that you guys? Yes, this IS why I stand in the yard with a camera and run away when you spot me!

Tags: green, gumball machine, white