painting pumpkins 2017
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My sister and I have come together every Fall season for as long as I can remember to paint pumpkins and get in the autumn spirit! I’m writing this post to preserve the memory of this event in 2017, but I also wanted to record thoughts I had on the differences between us.
My sister is undoubtedly my best friend. I am my complete, unbridled whole self around her on a consistent, unaltered basis…and she, to me. That’s why it makes me smirk thinking about how different we are. She is night, I am day. She is mellow and a bit on the cynical side, I come off as bubbly and optimistic.
Yesterday, after years and years of this kind of crafting, we both had a pretty good idea what we wanted out of the time spent together at my dining room table prepped with two long strips of craft paper and our bucket of childhood paintbrushes. My sister wanted to paint one, detailed gross zombie face. I was thinking of painting a modern, decorative, coordinating bunch.
Here’s a little back story on my sister & pumpkin painting: SHE HAS PAINTED SOME PRETTY EPIC PUMPKINS. The autumn season we worked at a Sports Bar (me as a server, she as a hostess) she painted a pumpkin portrait of the then Jets’ coach, Rex Ryan, and I kid you not…it looked exactlylike him. She set it on the hostess stand, and it created a buzz with everyone who walked in and saw it! Another year, she entered a Third Eye Blind contest which called for its participants to “prove their love of the band”. My sister ended up spending a single evening after dinner painting one of their album covers on a pumpkin, shared it on social media, and won the contest in less than 24 hours. // She painted this pumpkin two years ago at my pumpkin painting craft night, and this pumpkin last year, and this, this, and these in years past. Pumpkins are her preferred canvas.
So, of course, yesterday she knocked that zombie out of the park. I’d walk around to her side of the table, watch her spend all her time perfecting that one image, layering colors one on top of the other, shading, conturing, switching between brushes, and adding in details little by little… then, I’d walk back over to my side of the table and take the biggest brush I could find, slop a color on it, apply a wide opaque stroke, and repeat.
At one point, I broke a spell of extended silence between us and said, “I am so relaxed right now.” My sister agreed, and replied with, “My mind is so clear.”
The comfortable, crafty evening spent painting was actively therapeutic for the both of us. But in order for it to be, I realized, she needed to paint the one pumpkin in complex detail, and I needed to bang out the bunch with ease and simplicity.
We are best friends, best sisters, and best together. We share so much, but still must honor and maintain our uniqueness in order to get along. We are one in the same, but undoubtedly two. The proof is in the pumpkins:
It just cracks me up. I love it to no end. Thanks for letting me share. xoxo
