Heart Paintings

Royal has mentioned to Jayden and few times that he needs some updated Jayden-art in his office.  I happened to have a couple smaller canvases in my art stash, so we decided to paint Royal his Valentine present.

I painted big red hearts on the canvases and told them they could do whatever they wanted.  Paint over them, paint around them, paint in them.

And they did!

Willow loves paint.  Loves it.  She didn't dip her paintbrush in paint, she uses it to scoop it up and put it on the canvas.  Hers is very textured and layered.  :)

In the end, Willow had me repaint the red heart over her finished painting because her's had "somehow disappeared".

All Alone Again

I dropped my mom off at the airport this morning so she could fly back to Washington, and this concluded our marathon 2 months of visitors.  I'm just not sure what we are going to do around here while Royal's at work.  Just me and the kids.  How in the world did I keep them entertained while I was getting anything done????  How in the world am I going to get all those dishes done?  By myself?  Are you kidding me????  Ugh.  Anybody want to come stay with us for awhile????   I guess it's time to start planning our summer road trip to Washington.  Me and the kids are planning on driving and camping along the way.  Should be totally fun...or a total disaster...we'll see....but I'll be posting about it either way!

On my mom's last night here, we planned a private painting party at Paint the Towne to do a painting that my mom chose.  We had a big group coming at one point, but then everybody kept canceling on us, and it just ended up being 4 of us.  It was still fun.  Their loss!  I love painting, so I don't really care if there's 1 or 20, and it meant I had enough margaritas to share with everybody, including the teacher!

Bubble Poppies

My mom and I got to go to a painting class last night!  We were hoping to get to do a handful of them while she was here, but our schedules and the painting classes we wanted to do never lined up, until last night!  It was a fun class that was easy to tweak and make your own.  Unfortunately, there was a very obnoxious group there that were drinking far too much and kind of ruined the class.  They were being loud and rude to each other and saying horribly mean things about other people's paintings.  One lady had so much to drink, she threw something to her friends at the other table and managed to break a wine glass all over them.  It was ridiculous.  So, mom and I finished our paintings pretty quickly and got the heck out of there.

Here are our finished products!

Another one to hang on my wall!

Winter Paintings

I got to go paint at Paint the Towne twice last week!  The first class I went to with a couple of my friends and we painted this snowman.

And then the next night, Royal and I went to couples night where we got to paint 2 paintings that go together.  I painted the santa and Royal painted the snowman.  It was a lot of fun and I think Royal had fun too.  Of course, Royal had to put his own touch on his snowman and paint gold buttons with purple W's on them, so I added a purple W to my santa hat so they matched.  :)

Pumpkin and Ghost Paintings

I have really been on a halloween art project kick!  Remember how I had the kids paint pumpkins?  Well, I'm no liar, I totally have them hanging up on my wall, right next to the pumpkin wall hanging my sister-in-law, Lisa made me!

Then, last Saturday, I made my first trip to Paint the Towne, after like a 4 month hiatus, to do a pumpkin painting!  Don't worry, I'll be making up for my lack of attendance over the summer, I'm going back in just a couple weeks.  :)

Then for about a week now, I've had this idea of painting the kid's feet and turning them into ghosts.  My original idea was to just paint the whole canvas black and then do their ghost feet prints on top of that, but at the last minute, I decided to do more color and came up with this :

Jayden of course had an opinion and told me what the faces needed to look like.  But I don't mind, I get way more compliments on my work if I do something that Jayden wants me to do.  If I had just done a plain ole smiley pumpkin, Jayden would of said something like, "hmm, yea, i guess that's nice' But since I did a squiggly face pumpkin, I got, "I LOOOOOVE it"  I like the second compliment much better, and really, that's what I'm after.

Pumpkin Paintings

This evening after dinner, while Royal was doing the dishes, I set the kids up outside to create a little art.  I got canvases for them and thought it would be fun to paint some pumpkins to hang on the wall.  I totally didn't expect Willow's to turn out anything like a pumpkin, but I figured Jayden could paint one.  I lightly drew a pumpkin on their canvases, then set the kids loose outside with their easels and acrylic paints.

Jayden loved his pumpkin so much and the color orange, he decided he was going to make a camouflage pumpkin.   I get that, sometimes it's hard to stop painting.

And camouflaged it is!  The finished masterpiece!  "The Camouflaged Pumpkin"

Willow wasn't as concerned about camouflaging her pumpkin, as she was about making sure she used ALL of her paint.  Her canvas has so much paint on it, I'm pretty sure it's going to take about a week to dry.  It's gonna have great texture though!  "The Textured Pumpkin"

I'm totally hanging these up on my wall!

Paint the Towne (again)

I know this is shocking, but I have been back to Paint the Towne on numerous occasions.  It's just so convenient that it is only like 5 minutes away from the house, the classes are late enough in the evenings that I still get to hang out with Royal and the kids beforehand, the classes are early enough in the evening that I get a break from putting the kids to bed for a night (not that putting them to bed is difficult at all, but still nice...),  I get to drink a margarita (or whatever) while I paint, AND I get another piece of art to hang on the walls.  It also helps that I've been so many times now I've filled up 2 punch cards worth of free paintings, so painting lately has been free!  :)

I painted this for my mom for mother's day, the class was called Half Full.

This is The Turtle painting I did, and it now hangs in the kid's bathroom.

And this picture I just did last night and I think might be my favorite, although I say that about almost every painting I bring home....Three Pears (worth 1500 points if you are playing Farkle...ha ha ha! I love that game!)

Wheat Field

I went to Paint the Towne again on Thursday night with a couple friends, Megan and Nicole.  We painted Van Gogh's Wheat Field and thank goodness Nicole brought margaritas with her because me and this painting were not getting along very well.  :)

But here we are with our finished paintings! 

Painting

So, I am a big time emotional eater. I stuff my feelings and then I stuff my face. :)

There has been a lot going on with my family recently that has caused me to bake cookies and brownies and cook dinners that I can just eat and eat and eat. And since my pants are getting tight and I know eating like this isn't healthy for me physically and emotionally, I decided to try something else.  Something that kept my hands busy so they couldn't be shoving food in my mouth and something that was slow enough and intentional enough that I can sit and process what is happening.

I have loved going to the painting classes at Paint the Towne, but since I don't want to be away from my family in the evenings all the time, and some of the paintings on the days I could go I don't really want, or whatever, I just decided to get some of my own supplies and see what I could create.  This is what I did this weekend.  One for each of the kid's rooms.  I like them.  I was obviously feeling polka dotty.

Moonbirds

Last night I went to Paint the Towne, with some friends to drink some wine and paint some moon birds.



Whitney decided she was afraid of moons, so she went more for a sunny sky (and the fact it will match her daughters room).  :)



Robin got a little out of control with her red.  Good thing they provide aprons!:)



Here Nicole has hers almost finished



And then she managed to knock hers right over into her plate of paint, which made it look like her bird pooped.  :)  Don't worry she knew what she was doing and managed to fix the whole thing.



Here I am with my purple moon birds



And our whole group with our finished paintings!

Exhale

...is the new color of Royal and my bedroom. Royal picked it out and I thought "exhale" was the perfect name for a color for a bedroom. :) Well actually, Royal picked white first, and I told him that wasn't an option for me and if he didn't care, then maybe I'd paint the room pink. Soon after that he had a bit more of an opinion. :)




We of course had plenty of help from our #1 helper in the house.




And since I know that looking at people painting and finished painted rooms isn't exactly everyone's idea of a good time. Here's a random video of Willow's evil laugh.

Painting Party

Jayden was begging to do some painting yesterday, so I decided to set the kids up outside so Willow could participate in her first painting party!