Garden Stone {Craft Fail}

I'll let you in on a little craft blogging secret.  While we produce a lot of pretty awesome projects, there are as many not so awesome crafting endeavors.  And while I can usually say the artistic process made up for the fact that we didn't have the outcome we expected, a recent project didn't have incredible merits for either the process or the product.  Well,  here's how it goes...



...when I see a really cool craft project - a concrete garden tile - on a fabulous blog, The Nurture Store, and try to replicate it using only my memory that has been greatly compromised by motherhood.

I gathered all my supplies to work in the hottest room in our house, the garage.  Perfect, it will speed up the concrete's dry time.

• a jumbo size, flat box from Costco - Yes, on the first round of working with concrete, my four year old daughter will produce the largest stepping stone ever made by a preschooler. 
• a bag of leftover cement mix filled with lots of large pieces of gravel - I saved money by using something I already had at home.  Score!
• a large plastic container to mix the cement and a piece of plywood to stir - Clearly, I had no illusions of grandeur thinking I could hand mix large quantities of cement.  

As I am fruitlessly attempting to mix and pour my first ever batch of wet cement, my daughter, who loves being hands on with crafts, is strangely unmotivated to be my trusty sidekick in the great cement project.   

Could it be me shrieking for her to get back from the poof of cement dust?  

Or me grunting and struggling to lift the heavy bag of cement?

Or running wildly back and forth filling up my pitiful cup of water to mix a very large batch of cement?

Or trying to wipe the sweat from my brow covering myself in concrete dust? 

Or the minor abrasions I endured while struggling with the cement? 

Or trying to pour a very heavy bucket of mostly dried cement into a box?  

She clearly knew something I didn't know.  I am not cut out to work with cement.    

In the end, we had two garden tiles instead of one.  It broke in half. And two weeks later, we now have four garden tiles instead of two gracefully decorating a more successful DIY project, our sandbox. 

Come to find out, I am not the only blogger who has failed at the fabulous garden tile project.  At Home with Ali is sharing her struggles with concrete today.  Hop on over to her site to read about the challenges of working with concrete.  

Now, if I had carefully read and used the directions on Nurture Store, our project may have turned out differently.  But if my post has forever scared you from using concrete, Nurture Store has oodles of other FAB ideas for gardening with kids at her school gardening club.