If you can remember back a year, I pondered the conversation I would’ve had with my younger self in the essence of turning a quarter of a century. A month ago I turned the big 2-6.

My painting throne; seemed fitting, no? #superwholocked

Last year’s birthday was really hard for me for a number of reasons I’ve already discussed. But I have heard from numerous people that they too had a hard time turning 25. It’s kind of that “defining” moment of your young adult life: the one where you are out of college, trying to figure out what you’re doing with your life and trying not to break down in the process.

25 was an interesting year for me, but overall, it was pretty damn fantastic. I can gladly count the bad times on one hand and that’s pretty much it. But it takes many more hands to count my blessings and great things that happened to me. To name a few: I did my first 5k, sewed a full cosplay gown, made and solidified some great friends, got to go to the Pentagon for a work event, really came into my own and built my confidence 10 fold, started to make future plans, took and trumped the GRE, lost 50 lbs, embraced my nerdiness, got to watch one of my great friends marry the love of her life and got to see my favorite childhood boy band in concert… I mean honestly, it was bloody brilliant.

Wino heaven.

I started 26 with the only way I know how: getting crafty! If you’ve been following me (lack of posts and all) you know how hard it has been for me recently to find time to breathe, let alone let out my crafty side. It’s definitely something I feel I’m missing in my life right now and my sister came along in the nick of time to save the day! She got us reservations to a “Sip and Paint” in our hometown!

I’ve been dying to do one if these! I have my own canvases that I’ve gotten to do little with as of late (except for this Mother’s Day gift) and was excited to get creative! It was actually the head honchos in my work life that told me I need to follow along and document the progress as we progressed in our bottle of wine… so let’s see how we progressed!

Step in painting: 1
Wine consumed: ~2 sips

Drawing the basics: hill and sun (although, I like to think of mine more as a moon, you’ll see why later). Then we had to do a quick white base around the moon and sky.

Step in painting: 2
Wine consumed: ~half a glass

My sky was less swirly than most people’s…

Michelle’s turned out really cool… here she is mid-painting!

Step in painting: 3 & 4
Wine consumed: Full glass

My painting is already feeling the alcohol, clearly. Step 3 involved painting over the moon and then doing the hills, complete with shading. That was a little more difficult thanks to the wine. 😉 I had to break out a protein bar after realizing I hadn’t really eaten anything!

Step in painting: 5
Wine consumed: Working on my second glass

Probably not the best idea to try and do such intricate work after drinking, but luckily they had a template for this one. I started with the template and realized it was not working so well, so I just eye-balled it and hoped for the best… and then kicked back another glass in my “Heather don’t care” attitude. 😉

Step in painting: 6 & 7
Wine consumed: Finishing the bottle

So to close out our whimsical paintings, we added some swirls and dots (which I liked to think were fairies – or maybe that’s just me watching so much “Once Upon a Time”).

And so completed our paintings 🙂

Michelle and I with our finished products!

The top was what the painting was supposed to look like; the bottom was mine with an unexpected second piece of plate art. 😛

This was one of the neatest things to do! We had such a blast creating our masterpieces and seeing how everyone’s paintings differed in the end.

I highly recommend this activity for girls night or even date night! We saw a few couples who had fun creating some masterpieces.

Have you done a “Sip and Paint” sort of night? What kind of painting did you do?