Painting Thank You Notes

Mr. Sneaky Pants has been working on thank you notes for his arsenal of Christmas presents. Although I think thank you notes are enormously important, I must admit, I was extremely frustrated by trying to help Mr. Sneaky Pants with his notes. I was so frustrated, in fact, that I took a lot of pictures of the process so that I distracted myself from HOW frustrated I was feeling. We have painted with watercolors many, many times before, but for some reason, probably because I really wanted these to turn out kind of nice, Mr. Sneaky Pants was “forgetting” the process of dipping his brush into the paint, spreading the paint on the paper, and then rinsing the brush out before the next color. He’d try EVERY combination other than the combination that would work. He’d paint with the water. He’d dip his brush in the paint and then rinse it out in the water before the brush got to the paper. He’d dip his brush in every color possible without rinsing. He’s an enormous fan of brown and black watercolor paints, and these creations turned out more than a little gloomy, I’m afraid. But that’s all OK. We got the job done. And he still had fun. Today we wrote messages on all the notes, and as soon as I compile the notes his big sister has made, I’ll be ready to zip them off in envelopes.