Jen’s birthday was August 2nd, and Jen, much like myself, has a history of some crummy birthdays.  Mine is just a matter of bad timing.  Apparently 4 days after Christmas and 2 days before New Years is not the time to go about celebrating something as silly as a birthday.  But Jen… Jen’s just had some crummy luck.  Just off the top of my head I can remember Jen being laid up with a crazy back problem, being miserably huge and pukey 3rd trimester pregnant, being sickly, having her BFF be in the hospital due to pregnancy complications and birthing a baby the next day.  Hey, I did her a favor – I kept him in until the day after, right? :)

So this year Jen and Adrian had the bright idea to celebrate Jen’s birthday by going to Painting with a Twist.  We decided to celebrate later in the month so as not to get involved with any of Jen’s bad birthday juju.  …not really.  I think it was more that the painting we all agreed on was on August 29th.  But it’s more dramatic if I say it the other way, right?

I’d never heard of Painting with a Twist.  It’s a pretty cool concept.  You pay a fee and that reserves you a seat in a class with all supplies provided, and there is an instructor there to walk you through creating a painting.  Every class has a painting assigned to it, so you just browse through their calendar and sign up for the class that has the painting you’re interested in painting.  Brilliant, right?  You can bring in food and, more importantly, booze!  And when you’re done, you’ve got a nice art project to be proud of.

Jen, Adrian, and I are all pretty crafty in our own ways, but I wouldn’t consider any of us to be painters or overly artistic.  We didn’t really know what we were going to end up with, but I think we were all pleasantly surprised with how well our paintings turned out.  We were all following the same directions, but every painting is slightly different.  Here’s my finished painting:

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Not too shabby, huh? Right about now is when I’m wishing we’d taken a picture of the instructor’s painting… but, hey, I didn’t even remember to take my own camera! Jen, however, came prepared, so here are some of her pics of our fun Sunday afternoon painting adventure.

This is the three of us with our finished paintings.

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During our last break… almost done!

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They really break the painting process down step by step. It was pretty cool to see how everything comes together.

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Hey, wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense if I would have posted these photos in the reverse order? You know… start to finish, instead of finish to start? I realize I could edit, but Henry’s not really feeling the blogging right now, so I’m just going to go with it this way.

Oh, I can’t forget the Irish Dancers!

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We happened to sign up for the Painting with a Purpose event. Every month they do a charity event where they donate all of the proceeds from the class to a different group. Our class was benefiting the McTeggart Irish Dancers of North Texas, and they were there to give us a few performances during our breaks. It was way cool! And as Chandler would say… their “legs flail about as if independent from their body!”

Painting with a Twist was a lot of fun. We went to the Grapevine location, and if you’re in the area and looking for something different to do, I totally recommend it!