Pajamas and a Paintbrush

So, quite some time ago I saw that my brother had posted a picture on Facebook that implied that he painted a picture.  Now, I've never known Bill to be the creative type - and he certainly doesn't just whip out a paintbrush and canvas on a regular basis (or ever, to my knowledge).  So, I did what any curious sister would do - I Facebook stalked him until I found my answer.  I found out that he and Clare went to 'Merlot and a Masterpiece,' which resulted in even more searching on my part because I'd never heard of it.  'Merlot and a Masterpiece' is this business that is in downtown Bloomington - it allows you to bring in your own wine (or other alcohol), food and provides you with what you need to replicate a painting.  The painting varies depending upon when you go - but all in all, it seems like a fun date idea.

For a few months now, I've been wanting to surprise Crissy with this date.  She loves art and painting, doesn't do enough of it, and I'm decently creative - so it seemed like something great for us to do.  The only problem?  $35 or $40 per person.  Wowza.  $70 to $80 for a date is a lot for us.  So, on Friday I decided to just tell her that I'd been thinking of it for a while - and then we began discussing the idea of just doing it at home.  I mean, we have canvases, paint, paintbrushes, easels....the whole shebang.  The next obvious part of the process then became figuring out what we would paint.  Here's the thing - I'm creative....as in, I can sew, whip up a flower arrangement, tie bows with the best of them, make one hell of a gift basket, among other things....but I don't have Crissy's level of artistic talents.  So, we needed to find something we would want - and that I was capable of.  I started doing some searching and came up with this: 

Technically, it's a lamp shade from Ikea....but we really liked the fun pattern and knew that we could easily incorporate colors we wanted.  Oh, plus - we'd already decided we wanted something that could be hung in the kitchen.  We can't paint in our house - which means our kitchen is this horrid atrocity of cream colored walls and cheap white cabinets.  Lovely, right?  Barf.  So, we needed some color.

Saturday night became 'Pajamas and a Paintbrush' at our house.  Cheesy?  Absolutely.  But, seriously - after a night out on Friday, a night in while in our pjs was right up our alley Saturday.  We decided that we wanted three paintings - so we each did one and then split the last one (me doing the leaves and Crissy doing the squiggly flower thing).  Here are our pictures:

And, here are all three together on the wall.  You'll have to excuse the really crappy lighting in our house - and the fact that they look crooked....that just must be me.

We probably liked our version of the date better, honestly.  I mean - there's no way I would have worn fleece pants out in public.