Painting the Forest For the Trees

Lots of plates spinning around here, but I (mostly) set aside planning for an upcoming FORO and eyeglass team and running point as far as on-field orientation for four new families to help friends Kelsey & Franco get ready for baby girl Hernández. It took me ~45 minutes longer than it should have to get to their apartment in Santo Domingo Friday due to rain (as if I didn't get enough of that in Belize), but we still got all of our catching up out of the way over a spaghetti dinner so we'd be ready to buckle down in the morning. 

The plan: paint a pine forest on two adjacent walls in the guest-room-turned-nursery. 

The work crew: 

Turns out Franco is a sketching machine!

We got off to a slow start prepping the walls, fiddling with the projector, projecting the image THREE separate times on the longer wall and figuring out how to make the seams look...seamless, and running to the store for smaller brushes - all before lunch. 

Admittedly, I was questioning Kelsey's life choices on a few occasions. Do these look more like cacti or algae than pine trees? I'll help you get as far as I can before I head back Sunday, but there is NO way we are going to finish today...

I needn't have fretted. It might have been 9:30 pm, roughly 12 hours after we started, but I'd say the finished product is pretty spectacular. Dark green crib sheets, light green fringed curtains, and green rugs will round out the whimsical, PINK-FREE, woodland theme. Kelsey's due date is 11/18, but I'm hoping my sweat equity will entice tiburoncita ("baby shark") to hold out one more day so we can be birthday buddies :) 

Until next time, blessings in Christ!

P.S. No regrets about choosing an image with all straight lines that I only had to project once for the wall mural in my home office that I WILL repaint sometime...