Date Night :)

“Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”  

- Guillaume Apollinaire

 

 

 

Downtime at work is dangerous. I get bored. I have internet access. I look things up and either a) spend money we don't have on something I don't need or b) make plans. Last week, I made plans. There is a little shop downtown called the Cabernet Canvas that I went to once before with work. It just so happened that last Saturday they were having a couples night - a painting split in two canvases each painted by half of the couple. It sounded like a lot of fun and so I texted the hubs and asked him out on a date.

Some drama occurred when our babysitter was not available, but we found someone else who ended up being awesome and better qualified anyway. Off we went to dinner and then paint.

We went to the Mellow Mushroom across from the paint shop for dinner and shared a buffalo chicken pizza. I love spicy food and this was pretty yummy. More bacon than chicken, but still yummy.

 



 

Then it was off to the paint shop to get our creativity on! I had learned from the last time, that I needed to sit to the right of the instructor (same one as before) so that she wouldn't block my view when painting. She had been quiet and very unhelpful the last time, but was really talkative and friendly this time. Everyone has their bad days.

 

Empty Canvasses screaming for paint!
 

I wanted to paint the girl and have the hubs do the man. Makes sense. But...I sat down on his left which is the side the man is on. This shouldn't have been an issue, but wow did it mess with my head! She was painting it all on one canvas and we needed to break it in half, so I would watch her paint to the left and get all confused because I was on the left, but painting the right hand side of the picture. The hubs found this really amusing and refused to switch chairs with me until the very end.

Hubby's background



My background







We kept an eye on the other canvas to see where things would line up, but pretty much just tried to have fun and make it look decent. Next up was adding in the tree leaves. It looked complicated, but really was just adding layers of paint in the same manner keeping the center open. At first it looked like we would never match up, but we kept carrying on.

 

Hubby's red leaves

My red leaves

 

 On we went making the background look like fall leaves in the park.

 

The Hubbybear

Me

 

 We had a long intermission to allow everything to fully dry before moving on the lamp posts and the people. The instructor came over and we chatted for a bit.  She thought it was very amusing that we were sitting like that. She did say that to do the umbrella and people we needed to push the canvasses together and line them up. At first the hubs said no, but since I actually wanted to hang these up at home he relented.

 

I asked the instructor how hard it was to come up with paintings that were interesting, yet easy enough for the most basic beginner to do. She said she just paints her way and if she can do it, she can break it down in easy steps for others. To me that shows how good she really is. It is one thing to be able to use your natural ability to make beautiful artwork (or do math or surgery or landscaping etc..) but a whole other thing to be able to teach others to do it as well. Anyway...

 

My trees all finished

The hubs's trees all finished

Next up was to put the canvasses together and see how we did. I was quite happily surprised to see that they actually lined up!  The people were then painted in.

 

 



Look they match up!!



People and umbrella added

Awe :)



Highlights, lamp posts and trees



That's going on our wall above the couch :)

And that was it! Date night was a success. I had more fun with the painting than Hubbybear did, but we both enjoyed being out. Plus, I had a groupon coupon for buy one get one, so it was only half the price! W did well with his new babysitters and was fast asleep when we got home.