Anyway, all four chairs look exactly alike, save for the random splash of dried ketchup that I have yet to scrape off - and yet, if an outsider walked into my house during breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, I guess any time of day really, she or he would hear plastic chairs being scraped along the floor and some yelling and even the occasional sound of a small hand hitting a sibling's back, head, hand, you name it. All in the name of "my chair". How they know which chair is which is beyond me. They are all blue and they are all small and to me and Josh, they all look exactly alike.
But the kids can tell the difference. And I have gotten tired of starting every food sit-down with tears. So what is a mother to do? I considered buying more chairs, each one a different color, but the thought of a green table with one pink chair, one red chair, one blue chair and one green made me dizzy and vaguely nauseous.
A sane mother would take a Sharpie and write a name on the back of each chair. A normal mother would put a white office-supply sticker on each chair with the kids names. A mother with time on her hands might even dig into her stash of paint pens and decorate each kid's chair with their initials and some hearts, flowers, baseballs and bats. I considered all those options, and then went with option number four.
Once I had the names cut out, it all moved pretty quickly. As I have mentioned before, a cricut or sizzix machine to cut the letters out would have made the whole process MUCH faster but sadly, I do not have one. And I will mention again that they make great gifts. I will also say that my birthday is April 15th and now I will say no more.
Very slowly and using a sharp pencil, trace each letter onto the back of your scrapbook paper, with the letter facing down so that when you flip the cut-out scrapbook letter over, it will actually be the correct way.
Then just mod podge the letters onto the chair, allow it to dry and add a second coat of mod podge on top to seal it all in. Let it dry over night. I let the chairs dry on top of the kitchen counter - which the kids thought was so funny that I am not sure they noticed their names were actually on the chairs. But once they did, they were all smiley and happy.
From start to finish, this probably took a couple of hours, what with the cutting and tracing and everything, but it was worth it. The chairs look really cute now.
I suppose this would have gone much quicker if you are only doing for this one child, but then you wouldn't really need to do it, right? It's not like one kid is going to fight with himself over the other chairs...