Venture into watercolors

Before we left for Connecticut I decided to let Samantha try out the new watercolors she got for Christmas.  This was a huge treat as we have never painted at our house before.  Oh the horror!!  We always paint when we are at our friend C's house and every time we are there she begs to paint so I knew this was a must for Christmas.

I am a huge fan of Melissa & Doug so I picked out a few painting products from them to try out.

I read a lot of reviews online about the smocks being awkward and bulky but I didn't find that to be the case.  It looked SO cute on Samantha and she actually kept it on the whole time.  She is currently in a phase of wanting to be naked all the time so this was huge!  The smock was a little long, so Zach probably won't be ready to use it for some time, but I may throw it on him once just for a photo!  Now one neat thing advertised on the package is that you can personalize the smock.  However, I have NO idea how to do it!!  That white square on the front is where they say to do it, however, the white is on the front of the pocket so it's not like I can make a cute name tag to slip inside.  Am I supposed to paint on it?  What do I do to make this cute?!

We then got to work on our paintings.  I loved the choices of colors but honestly, I felt like they didn't transfer to the paper very well.  While wet the colors looked pretty dull, though after they dried they did lighten up a bit.  I was hoping for more "pop" while we were painting though.  What are your favorite brands of watercolors?

Here are our finished products!  Mine was a nice flower scene and then Samantha added some random colors on the bottom.  Thanks Sam!!

This is a portrait of Snow White!  Crazy how accurate it is, right?!

We had so much fun painting and I can't wait to do it again!!