Adventures in Rock Painting

I got all up in Esmerelda's face about painting really great words of wisdom on some rocks after seeing a picture of such a thing on Pinterest. So I set about planning what we'd need for materials:

• rocks
• paint
• something to put paint on rocks aka paint brushes

The thing about rocks is that unless you live beside a river there aren't of a useful shape lying around - they need to be fairly flat and round in order to have aesthetic appeal. The search began…

Read about the epic adventures of rock collecting and how brilliant minds are bad at painting after the jump.

The Mission: Acquire Rocks

While planning our paint date over chat with Esmerelda  I suddenly remembered that the house next door has river rocks along the side of their house. Telling her to hold on, I darted outside in my jammies to do some recon and sure enough, river rocks all over! Unfortunately the house has been on the market for a very long time with no yard maintenance, meaning the rocks were super grimy, broken and mildly depressing.

With my hoodie up over my head I grabbed a couple handfuls of decent stones and sauntered back to my own house, trying to appear as if I were merely going for a small walk around the front lawn, 'taking the air' if you will.

Back inside, I raced to my laptop to tell Esme what I'd found and she wasn't effing there anymore. Nice friend, had I gotten caught and charged with some archaic NoCal law regarding rock kidnapping I know who would NOT have been available to bail me out.

Anyways, I had 14 decent specimens in hand which Ender helped clean up and then hijack. Ender – 14, Me - 0.

Later that day we drove to Palo Alto for some business of R's and I forced him to cruise neighborhoods with small streets while I eyeballed the walk ups for appealing rocks. The thing about R is that he is in no way shifty. He just pulls up in front of a house and says 'how about there?' Yes, those are great. However I'd like to remain free of a criminal record so I'd rather we don't stop in a wide open area where I can see 9 people without even turning my head. Finally we found a sort of unclaimed sidewalk and I stood outside the car pretending to suffer motion sickness while covertly stuffing stones in my pockets.

Alas, still not enough to supply both Esmerelda and myself along with our kids. So R took me to a craft store where I found two bags of candlescaping rocks shipped here from China, because that makes economic sense, and the brushes. Yay! Let the inspirational juices start flowing!

See the finished product after the jump!

Setting Up the Work Area & Rock Production

Things we needed in order to pop the cork on our good ideas:

• wine
• bottle opener
• pizza
• kid distractors including their own work area loaded with activities
• biscotti

Esme got the glasses, I popped the cork, Esme poured, I sorted rocks for us & the kids, Esme got the paints ready, we both tore through the recycling for boxes to lay down on the kids' work area and then we hunkered down for some creativity time.

 Blank stares. 

*Another glass of wine.*

And go! My first rock didn't go so well despite the feel-good message. I chose a brush that was too thick. Lesson learned.

Esme had better printing skills but she did have the thinner brush.

*More wine.  Pizza.*

More rocks and texts to Esme's sister, Lola, for ideas. Lola's rocks are clustered together here:

I'm pretty sure that as a runner Lola will be overjoyed with a bag of inspirational rocks that she can stuff into the little key/credit card holder on her shorts. (1) hydration (2) rocks (3) iPod.

Time to make biscotti. I didn't realize how many different oven sessions are required to bake it. I got hungry and ate some between the 2nd and 3rd phase. So I probably have worms now but as Lola pointed out later, they will likely be Italian worms that taste good dipped in coffee and will enjoy fall holidays.

The pumpkin biscotti actually turned out quite well and I will see if I can get Esme to pass me the recipe to post for you all.

After that we just sort of stopped painting except for this last epic production by Esme, which at first I thought was her attempt at creating some sort of codex.

R showed up to drive me and E home but first he enjoyed a small glass of wine, some biscotti and some Tenacious D on the laptop. I ran interference on the kidlets because Tenacious D isn't really something I want E singing at preschool on Monday. Well, I guess Tribute would be alright but F*ck Her Gently might be a little blue.

All in all an excellent adventure.

My favorites. A masterpiece that I like to call
'The Personification of Rock'