Girls Night Out

Girls' Night Out tonight with my peeps!  We have been talking for a while now about going to a paint night, so we finally did it!  We were there for a paint your pet event, and I struggled...don't have a dog or cat.  So my first thought was to just pick an animal that's not normally a pet and paint it for variety.  I was about settled on a horse when Jonathan suggested I paint a betta fish like Leiden's.  I loved the idea.  I didn't have any pictures of Leiden's fish, so we just found one online that I liked and used it.  This was the picture submitted:

When you get there, they have penciled in the picture, which is super helpful, and lets you get a jumpstart on actually painting.

Meghan and Melanie just started plugging away, relaxed and having fun.  Alecia and I had a harder time.  I wanted my painting to look like the picture, dang it.  And I knew there was no way that was going to happen, so I was discouraged and almost paralyzed about where to start.  Lamenting my lack of skill and knowledge.  The lady there kind of laughed at us, both struggling.  She finally said something that clicked for me.  She said, the painting isn't SUPPOSED to look like a picture.  It's a painting, done with cheap acrylic paint.  Okay.  I could get behind that.  Then suddenly I felt free to just do my best.  Poor Alecia, though, that wasn't good enough for her.  The lady said she would be a great candidate for the wine part of the paint night!  We all laughed because we know it's true!

My final picture doesn't look like the photograph, but it's a decent likeness, and I'm actually pretty proud of it.  The owners said they've not seen a painting so well done in a while.  They were probably just flattering me, but I still like it!

I don't have any kind of emotional tie to my painting like the other girls.  Theirs turned out darling, too.

We hit a nice restaurant out in Daybreak for dinner after painting.  I got salmon.  It was pretty good, but not the amazing I was hoping for.  Sometimes I really miss the restaurants my friends and I found in Minneapolis!  The company, though, was stellar, and it was so fun to go out and spend time with my friends.