This past Saturday Jean celebrated her 50th Birthday. We wanted to celebrate with family and friends, so on Sunday we had a Wine and Painting Party at ArteVino in Cranford. The studio is located in the heart of downtown and it is great. You bring your own wine or other beverages and snacks and they provide plates, cups and utensils. In addition they have an art instructor to guide you step by step through whatever painting you sign up for.

We booked a private party and had 17 people painting, several people decided not to paint, but still had a great time. There were several of Jean's teaching friends, our kids and some of their friends (who are really part of our family), Jean's mother and both of her sisters, my brother and his wife as well as nieces and nephews from both sides of the family. The day before the party, we purchased chips and sodas and just before the party we ordered pizzas from Vinny's Pizza and Pasta and picked up a few more bottles of wine. As is the norm for our parties there was too much food and wine, but it made for a lot of fun.

After about 40 minutes of mingling, eating and drinking we all went to our canvases to paint our rendition of Claude Monet's famous painting, Water Lillies. The painting class lasted almost 3 hours. You'll see in the pictures the paintings at various stages as well as several finished paintings.

This was a tremendously fun event and we will do it again, even just for a date night, soon!

By Wayne & Jean, 16 December 2014

(Click here for the original post)