Ladies weekend 2011

Almost exactly a year ago, Chris was celebrating his bachelor party at the lake with all the men in the family.  They roasted a lamb, had too much to drink and spent the weekend hanging out in a "man only" zone.  They had so much fun last year that they decided to make it an annual event so, the ladies decided to have our own little "girls only" weekend.

Brenna did some looking around for fun activities to do in the city and we ended up at Bottle and Bottega located just a few short blocks from their apartment.  Such a great idea!  Basically for $35 per person you got all the supplies you would need (and a canvas) to paint for 3 hours.  They had a "painting of the day" which an instructor would detail how to paint, but if you didn't like the one they chose then you could paint whatever you'd like.  On top of that, it was a BYOB event so the 6 of us came armed with 5 bottles of wine.

Here is the picture we were supposed to be painting:

After we hemmed and hawed for a bit we all decided that we would paint this painting.  I knew I would need all the help I could get so I wanted to take advantage of the instruction that came along with the painting of the day.  Lindsay and her sister Sarah did different ones, which I will show you later, but the rest of us decided we would just stay on the safe side and work this one. 

Here is a picture of my painting about 1/2 way through. 

Looks just like the real one right?  hahah!  Give me a break!  First, I'm not an artist, and second, it's only half way done.  What we cool is that they had us block out the picture before we even started.  We folded our sample into 4 quadrants and then used those smaller sections to start sketching a rough outline of our painting.  We first used pencil to lightly trace out what we wanted to paint, and then started with the colors.  They taught us how to layer to give the painting depth and how to mix the primary colors to get the color you wanted.

Before I do the big unveiling of our finished works, I want to give you a sneak peak of what Lindsay and Sarah were working on.  Theirs turned out SO cool but they painted right up until the end of class so I didn't get a finished shot of their creations.

Lindsay's is a branch and after this part she added little white flowers all over.  I can't wait to see the finished work!

Sarah's is tall skinny trees with mountains in the back ground.  She doesn't even have the trees painted in yet, but if you look really close on the table under her painting you can get an idea of what it will look like when it's finished.

Alright, now for the moment you've all been waiting for....the finished product:

Hahaha....do you love it?  I don't know where I'm going to hang it.  We joked that we were going to take all of our pictures out to Koontz Lake and hang them all out there.  Who knows...maybe!

And finally, one big group shot with us all holding our creations.

It was pretty cool to see that even though we were all painting the EXACT same thing, every one came out a little different.  We had such a great time on girls weekend.  After painting we went to Cafe BaBaReba and enjoyed some great tapas.  Then we topped off the evening with a few stops at the bars along the way home and ended to evening playing Catch Phrase at B's apartment until about 1 am.  Such a great time!  Can't wait to do it again next year ladies.  Hey, if the boy's get an annual weekend, then so do we!