Date Night: Painting Our Portraits

This weekend we did something we have never done before for date night. Something that in all my twenty eight years I have never tried at all.  We REALLY ventured from the norm and decided to.....
 PAINT!  Now, I  would like to preface this post with the fact that neither my husband nor I have any artistic training....or for that matter, ability.  And no, we didn't think that we would be producing anything that would be museum quality.  But, we thought it might be fun to try to paint each other's portraits. 

So, I stopped by our local Michael's and picked up the supplies.  Since we are total amateurs, and we are also cheap, I decided to forgo the nice brushes and oil paints and go for acrylics.  I bought some basic colors of acrylic craft paint and a five dollar pack of brushes.

 Then, I decided to go big time and get real canvas for us to paint on.  It felt fancy.  The canvas came in a two pack so it worked out nicely.  I also picked up a little plastic paint palette for us to mix our colors on. 

The total for all of the supplies was only about fifteen dollars.  Easels, on the other hand, are a little more pricey. And, since I wasn't about to buy one, we just leaned our canvases up against a Pampers box (that's our life and we've accepted it).

When all the kids were asleep we set up our paint station and turned on our favorite music playlist. The only strategy we could think of was to paint the background first. So, that's what we did.

 And then it was just us.  We spent several hours working on our masterpieces.  The fun part was that we got to really just look at each other.  We studied each other's eyes and mouths and tried to reproduce a skin color that was true to life.  We talked and sang along to our favorite songs and laughed at how bad our art skills were.

And, in the end we stayed up WAY past bedtime because we were having so much fun.  Suprisingly, my husband said that painting was one of his favorite dates that we've had.  And to top it all off he told me that it reminded him how beautiful all of me features are...now THAT'S a good date!  I am currently trying to think of another date that will leave my husband thinking that I am a raving beauty....help me out here.

Anyways, the paintings were a little laughable but it was a great time and we may even do it again soon now that we have an idea of what works and what doesn't.  This morning our kids oohed and ahhed at our art work.  They said that we have all the fun.  It's not fair.  And they weren't quite sure who we were trying to paint.  Maybe someday we'll take and art class together :)