The first painting of a beach scene was done for a party at my house. Notice the helicopter over Toby’s shoulder. The second painting was done for a "camo party". We all dressed in camo, divided into teams, and had a race through an obstacle course over a mile long.

Bec recently asked about my wall paintings. I may have blogged about this before, but I thought I would share some old wall paintings and tell how they came about. In 2001, our church youth banquet was held at an old theater building. The atmosphere of the room was great, but it had immovable movie posters all along the walls. The theme of the banquet that year was Italy. My art girls were asked to come up with some large wall paintings to cover the movie posters. We painted nine Italian scenes – each were about three feet by six feet. At that time we lived in a different house which had a long, extra-wide hall. I put together butcher paper to make the large canvases and put them all down the hall, in the kitchen and anywhere where there was wall space. My art girls and I had a great time painting. Usually we had the stereo blasting and we were slinging paint bee-bopping to the beat and often singing along. The girls loved it so much that it became a tradition to paint a large wall painting for all the banquets. We also painted large posters for other parties – back drops for picture taking. It led to our being commissioned to do some real murals. We have done mountain scenes around an entire room. We did western scenes for a hunting lodge. Some of my girls have done individual work for relatives and friends. It has been lots of fun to paint elbow to elbow with the girls and see them learn to meet each other's styles. I will try to post some more old wall paintings to show you my art girls’ work.