When Spring Comes Back...

...she wakes up my insides. Today, my friends, was lovely. The air was warm and the breeze balmy. After a morning at church and an afternoon spent enjoying good food and good company with a home-away-from-home family, what better way to spend the last hours of daylight than painting?


I am no painter. But I like to pretend that I am...


I've just recently started fooling around with watercolors, and though I get ridiculously frustrated that the visions in my head are so much lovelier than what bleeds its way onto paper, I still have a lot of fun. I have a friend whose birthday is coming up on Friday, and I decided long ago that part of her present would be a watercolor.


Not-yet-painted-birthday-watercolor + too-beautiful-to-be-wasted-spring-day = One Darn Good Afternoon


Step 1:


Travel to the local park and pick a scenic place in which to do some paint-dabbling. Be sure to have a clear view of a) the river so you can watch geese taking off and canoers canoe-ing and b) the picturesque red barn in the distance. Start painting. Stop to feel the sun on your skin. Keep painting.

Step 2:


Finish painting and leisurely clean up after yourself. Stroll back to your car.


Step 3:


Choose a painting to give to said Friend Whose Birthday Is On Friday. Do this by leaning each watercolor on a teapot, taking a picture, and framing the one you think she'll like best. Try not to be hard on yourself when you see your amateur work...after all, you're not a real painter. Count yourself lucky that--seeing as when you paint, you just start blobbing water all over the place in the hopes that shapes will emerge--you accidentally made something that might work as a gift.

              Exhibit A:

  
              Exhibit B:

              Exhibit C:

              Exhibit D [the winner]:

Step 4:


Ask a trusted friend (and, oddly enough, the only person who knows your newly-born blog exists) if she thinks you made the right selection. Or if she should keep painting between now and Friday because none of them are fitting to gift to a friend? [Sally, if I were you I would tell me the latter. Does it bother you that the evergreen is about a bajillion times smaller than the other tree? I just keep telling myself that it's just a baby evergreen...].


Today was a Good Day.