here is a pot for your herbs

I kind of took the winter off from projects. Not intentionally, it just sort of happened. But now I'm back with a vengeance. I've recently been working on three projects, with a couple more in the planning.

I'm going to start with the simplest project. I'd been thinking about growing some herbs for awhile. Some recipes I use call for fresh parsley or basil or something, but the amount I would use is less than how much you have to buy in the store, and I don't always have a use for the rest of it. Yes, I could do better recipe planning for the week to do all recipes that need fresh basil, but realistically, I'm just not going to go to that much effort. So I thought it would be great to grow a few of my own herbs, and then I could just grab a couple of leaves as needed. 

I had an old window box planter that I thought would be perfect to put a couple of herb plants in, but it was a faded sort of grey-green that would not look good in the dining room, so I decided to give spray painting it a try. I got Rustoleum spray paints in white and a sort of yellow-orange that ended up being a bit more yellow than intended. I wanted to do the bottom tray part in white and the rest yellow.

I started out by turning the planter upside down and spray painting the bottom white. Initially, I thought it would be easiest to take off the bottom tray and paint the pieces separately. However, being an older planter, the bottom was firmly connected, and the plastic started cracking when I tried to pull the pieces apart. So I just sprayed the bottom and didn't worry about over-spray since I'd be painting the top anyway. After a few coats of white and letting that dry fully, I taped Frog tape around the white bottom, turned the planter right-side up, and spray painted the rest yellow. I tried to get a good amount of the inside painted too, since the dirt wouldn't be coming all the way to the top.

And that was that. Like I said before, the color wasn't quite what I was going for. I was trying to match the more mustard yellow I had used for these side tables in the dining room and the plant table in the living room. This turned out a brighter yellow, but I think it will be fine.

Next up, painting a yard sale side table for this planter to live on! But that's a post, and a project, for another day...