Date Night

For Tim and I, date night has been pretty hit and miss with us since having kids, especially since we have lived in Virginia. There always seems to be a million excuses preventing us from actually planning a date and most of the time we are just tired and want to veg on friday nights. But recently we were reminiscing about the good old days back in Logan, UT when we were poor college students but we still managed to plan dates. These dates, which usually involed little money but lots of creativity, were so much fun! From candle-light picnics in the living room to sledding down old main hill on $2.00 sleds (which were really just long sheets of thick, rolled-up plastic with holes cut out of the top for handles), we had some of the funnest dates! And I have to give Tim props for the most creative date nights- he is amazingly creative, my husband! I consider myself very fotunate! I will admit that I was not too thrilled about his idea to sled down old main hill ("But I don't have snow gloves" "It's too cold" "Our sleds suck" "We are too old to go sledding"), but it was one of the funnest things I have ever done. I will never forget that date.

Anyways, enough reminiscing. So Tim and I decided that we need to start having a weekly date night. And since getting a babysitter and going out every friday is not in the budget, we knew we were going to have to get creative. Tim took it upon himself to plan our first date. All day friday I kept asking him "So what are we going to do? Did you rent a movie?" But he refused to tell me. I noticed when he got home from work that he had a little plastic CVS bag, which had me completely baffled. "What in the world is he planning that would involve something from CVS?", I thought. I had my doubts about this one, as I usually do. So we got the kids to bed and Tim brought over his little bag and pulled out a package of paint brushes and kids paints. Then he grabbed a roll of old drawings from work and announced that we would be painting portraits of each other. Just imagine me with a very smug look on my face that said "Are you kidding me?" I am sure a "Hmph" or two came out of my mouth. I am by no means a painter. I have never painted anything in my life unless it involved scrapbook paper or old wood frames. But he insisted. Well first off, I knew that if I was going to paint a portrait it was not goint to be with Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple kids paints. How do you make a proper skin tone out of those colors? So I pulled out my extensive supply of Craft paint (which apparently Tim had no idea existed) and we donated the kids paints to the Art for Jace Association. Then we turned on some good music, grabbed all of our supplies, sat accross from each other at the kitchen table and started sketching.

Well, once again, Tim proved me wrong with his amazing creativity! I have to say that this was probably the funnest thing I have ever done! I don't think I have ever laughed so hard in my life! Watching what we were each coming up with was such a blast! I am sorry I doubted you, honey. And now I have no idea what to plan when it is my turn next week. My brilliant idea to rent Spiderman 3 just isn't going to cut it anymore. So I have my thinking caps on (And if anyone wants to send me secret ideas, you can email them to me. I am open for suggestions!)

So here are our masterpieces, signed by the artists. We think they are both pretty darn good, so we thought we would put them up on the blog for you all to vote on. Which is your favorite? We would love to hear what you think about our art! I hope they give as good a laugh as they did us!

Here is Tim's painting of me. Hhe had a little trouble with skin tone, so don't you worry- I have not recently had a bad accident with the self tanning lotion. But have you ever seen more beautiful hair highlights?:



And my painting of Tim. Clearly I had a little trouble with head proportion, but I thought the added chest hair(which Tim was a bit upset about- he goes to great lengths to hide his chest hair) was a great touch:

And does anyone else see the resemblance between Tim and Yao Ming? Tim thought my picture looked like Yao, so I googled some pictures of him and boy was he right! I will never look at Tim the same again...

Hope you enjoyed those! Please be sure to VOTE!

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Which is your favorite?

"Mandy" by artist Tim Carroll "Tim" a.k.a. "Szzzzz" by artist Mandy Carroll