Paint Night, Baby J and Cheesy Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread

     During the Pandemic lockdown I really missed sharing a paint night with my sister Lisa and our friend Lupe. The three of us are like the Three Amigos and at times like the Three Stooges, depending on how much wine and how many shots of Agavero we've shared. But no matter what, we always have fun.

    Here's a photo of the three of us, it's pretty old, I believe from 2019, but I just love this one. 

    Because of the health of my mom she and I were very careful to stay in quarantine to prevent her getting sick, so paint night was put on hold until this past Saturday night, June 11th. 

    We had planned to get together at 5pm at my house, but Lisa and Lupe surprised me by showing up at around 4:30! They caught me still prepping and I didn't even have time to change the grungy t-shirt I was wearing, so needless to say there are no pictures that I allowed to be taken of me that night!

    However we did take pictures of almost everything else, but let's start with the food we shared. 

    Lupe brought our appetizer, a veggie tray with snap peas, carrots, broccoli, celery, baby tomatoes and ranch dressing. Wish we had a picture!!! Picture or not, it was so good!

   As for a beverage, we started the festivities with a shot of our favorite tequila, Agavero. It was delicious. I had bought two kinds of wine because I know some people don't really like wine and I didn't remember if Lupe did, so I bought a very mellow and sweet Stella Rosa, cause everyone loves Stella Rosa wines. I also bought a 2019 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon as I'm partial to Cabs. I don't remember who had what but after a shot of Agavero and half a glass of Cab I was not so worried anymore about people showing up early!

    By this time the Cheesy Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread was done and we had that with a mixed spring salad on the side with Italian Dressing. Again no photo, but I have blogged the recipe, so here's a picture and a link to the recipe is HERE. 

    We then cleaned up and what I like best about these two ladies is that they jump in and help! Then it was time to get down to painting.

    But before I talk about the painting, we had a special guest. Someone that has made multiple appearances on my blog, someone near and dear to my heart, Baby J!!! She is Lisa's granddaughter. Here's one of the first pictures I posted about her on the blog back on Sept, 2014. 

    She and I have done numerous Art Projects every time she visits and it was so fun to have her join us for the first time ever for Paint Night. Here she is, all grown up and beautiful!

    I'll show her artwork first. She painted a bunny rabbit peeking out from the left side of the canvas. She's only halfway through in this photo, but you can tell she's pretty pleased with her work so far!

    Here is her final piece, she did an excellent job and she is the smartest, funniest, most insightful child ever. She astonished us with her knowledge and her vocabulary is over the moon. I know she's my niece but I'm not exaggerating, it's a flippin' genius!

    Here's the piece Lupe started, none of us really had time to completely finish our art piece, except for Baby J, but we got a good start. Lupe is wanting to try stenciling designs on some of her walls at home, so she took the opportunity to stencil on a canvas board and we all loved where this is going and hope she frames this once she is done. (You can see the intensity on Baby J's face in the background as she works on her painting.)

    Lisa decided to work on what was to me a very difficult piece, but I love what she's got so far and it's going to be beautiful once she is done. There's a waterfall in the middle part there that is not painted in yet.

    I had purchased a book for Lisa when we had our road trip to Ojai a couple of weeks ago and there was a photo in that book that I really wanted to try painting, here's the photo.

    And here's what I've done so far, I have quite a ways to go and in the photo it looks like the sun setting behind the tree, but in mine it looks more like dusk already, so I may add some stars and then paint the tree over it, not sure yet.

    We also had a surprise visit from Baby J's dad and Lisa's son Sean, who is a police officer with our local police department. Since he was there my mom took the opportunity to give him a handmade quilt she was making for his birthday but she couldn't wait until January of next year. She's so proud of him!

    He just stayed for a second as he was on a break and had to go back on duty, but it was wonderful to see him and I am so grateful to him for sharing Baby J with us all these year. Love you Sean!

    I will end this post with a photo of the joyful chaos that was on my kitchen table that night. I hope Baby J remembers this night, but if not this blog post will always be here for her, as well as all the other blog posts since 2014. 

    Thank you Lisa and Lupe and when can we do this again!

My Art Featured on Art Group - Bloom Where You Are Planted

      I'm a member of a prompt related art group on Facebook called The Mixed Media Emporium with Nina Ribena & Kylie Coo. 

     The group has over 10,000 members and out of those 10,000 members my art was chosen for a special honor and picked to be the masthead of the group page for the 4th week of April, 2022. 

     Everyone in the group congratulates you and it really helps to inspire you to work hard to continue to create artwork that people love.

 

     I am so honored to have my art featured, here's the art page I did that was chosen. This is a page in my art journal. 

     This is a two page spread that I made for my homemade art journal. The art journal is made out of a recycled Fruit Roll-Ups Box, covered with fabric and the decorated, it's a whole process and I may do a blog post for it another time. 

     What we do in this group is called Mixed Media Art, anything and everything is fair game. In this piece I used leaves cut out from an box of tissue paper, here's a picture I found online of the top of a box. Once I cut out the leaves, I peeled off several layers so the leaves would not be so thick. 

     I took a page out of the art journal (the pages are removal of ease of use). The page I decided to use already had the background on it. It's what we call a "mop up" sheet. As I am doing other projects I have a sheet of paper either underneath to protect my desk or sometimes to the side and I clean off my paint brush, or try paint colors, so eventually it's got a beautiful blend of colors, in this case I felt it had a bit of a jungle look to it. So I started gluing the leaves around the top and bottom of the page to make a border. 

     I added a flower I had made following another YouTube channel and started gluing the sentiment "Bloom Where You Are Planted" and then added butterflies, because I love butterflies!

     And that was it. I was surprised that something so simple to create was worthy of the honor of being the masthead, but hey, I'll take it!

     Not to toot my own horn, but "toot-toot" this is actually the 4th time my artwork has been chosen. You can check out the first time HERE, second time HERE, third time HERE.