He's a crafty one

After you've been married for a while, you can feel like you know everything there is to know about someone. You've heard all their stories, you understand their quirks and you can almost finish their sentences. But occasionally, you learn something completely new and different...like I learned this week that my husband's an artist! When did that happen?

I already knew he was a great cook...

And he's handy when I need a seam repaired...

But I had no idea he could paint!

When we were on vacation in Wyoming, we stopped in for dinner at a little restaurant in West Yellowstone. There was a painting of a blue buffalo behind the bar, and we both loved it. I snapped a picture of it with my phone, and Trea said he wanted to try to paint it sometime. I didn't think he would actually do it, and I had no expectations of how it would turn out. But last weekend, he painted a blue buffalo in one afternoon, and it looks almost exactly like the one from the restaurant!

So since he has discovered this new love of painting (and he's really good at it), I signed us up for date night at Painting with a Twist in Fayetteville. I haven't tried painting since 7th grade art class, and I fully expected our evening to be a total failure for me, but fun for Trea. It was kind of the opposite.

We were each supposed to paint one half of a nighttime city skyline on two canvases that can be displayed together. I did not have high hopes for us to actually pull this off, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'm not completely terrible at painting! (When given specific, step-by-step instructions.)

This place is more like a painting party and less like a painting class. They try to ply you with wine the whole time so you don't feel like a loser when your painting looks like a 3rd grader did it, but this plan did not work on us. We were serious and focused the entire three hours -- so focused that Trea rinsed his brush in his wine glass. He was stressed out like I've never seen him before. He was exactly this much fun until his last brushstroke:

In his defense, his half of the painting was more challenging than mine, so he felt a lot more rushed to keep up with the class than I did. This was his workstation not even halfway through the evening:

Aaand this was mine:

Though things got a little tense along the way, it worked out in the end. We went home with some pretty darn good looking paintings!

Our bridge didn't quite turn out the same color, but other than that, we were pleased as punch with our little artistic endeavor. Now, who wants a painting for Christmas?