Cherry Blossom Tree – Part 1

My best friend Abbie has 2 adorable twin girls, who are 3 years old.  Super cute.  They keep her very busy and she’s an awesome mom.  She’s the most creative person I know, and she works with every medium available.  Glass, metal [she can weld!], paint, pencil, clay, fabric, yarn, wood, paper, ceramic, mosaics, stencils, etc.  She’s been working on painting a border of flowers around the base of her girls’ bedroom wall.  Here’s an example:

So cool!  She free-hands it, which is even more impressive.  The fence posts are painted too.  Last week she started painting an apple tree on Claire’s side of the room:

       

It doesn’t have apples yet, but it will.  She’s also going to hang a bird feeder on the wall, in the tree, and surround it with yarn birds she made.  She made the butterfly paper chain you can see in those pictures, too.  So clever!

So this weekend she asked if I’d like to come over and help.  Yes!!!  When I got there she said the plan was for me to paint a cherry blossom tree on Meara’s side of the room.  I’ve never painted a cherry blossom tree before, but I’ve always wanted to.  I’ve often thought about free-handing one on our bedroom wall so Abbie was like “well here’s your chance to try it out!”.  As I’ve said before, the great thing about paint is if you mess up, you can paint over it.  But I surprised myself by actually doing a pretty good job on my first try.  I didn’t get a whole tree painted, but I got a branch done.

Branch [a mix of black, brown, and grey acrylic paint]:

Adding the blossoms [pink and white acrylic paint]:

       

Adding flower stems:

The girls were with their Gaga [Abbie’s husband Briggs’ mom], but when they got home we showed them Claire’s updated apple tree and Meara’s cherry blossom branch.  They loved everything.  Here’s a sleepy Meara looking adorable in front of her branch:

Then it was outside to watch Briggs feed the chickens – I love seeing the chickens!  I got the hairy eyeball from this one:

But once Briggs hung up a fresh head of lettuce and poured their chicken kibble it was a mad rush of feathers and feet:

      

       

Except for this broody girl who is insistent on hatching her non fertilized eggs:

Briggs has to manually remove her and place her in front of the kibble.  Poor thing!

I will be going back to Abbie’s soon to work more on the cherry blossom tree.  I can’t wait!  Thanks so much Ab for having me over to help!!!