Mother's Blessing Part 1: Belly Painting!

A week or so ago my best est friends threw me a Mother's Blessing. Basically it is to celebrate the women who is about to become a Mother for the first time or in my case for the 4th time! Sara planned the whole thing and really put lots of thought and energy into making it the most beautiful and special event I have ever had during the course of a pregnancy except perhaps the birth itself. It was incredible. I am still working on getting the whole outline of her "blessing" so that I can share it with all of you readers, but for now I wanted to share just one aspect of the Blessing.

Sara and I had talked about doing a belly painting on the day of my Mother's Blessing. We wanted all the ladies (and the children) at the blessing to take part in painting my belly. Basically painting a pregnant belly to me is a way of giving the mother and child energy and love and showing support to them. So I knew it would be special to have these special ladies paint on my belly. Sara and I started looking around for ideas on what to have the "theme" of the painting be so that collaboration would be possible. We found a beautiful belly painting on line of beautiful vines and all kinds of different flowers. We knew we had found the perfect theme!

The next step was to figure out what we would use to paint on my belly. Sara and I over the years have used a variety of painting supplies with varying degrees of success. We always end up with great belly paintings but our materials sometimes limit our creativity. We wanted to give the ladies at my Mother's Blessing the best possible platform for creativity, so the materials we used to paint with became VERY important. After much thought and discussion we decided that using something that was designed for skin was our best bet. I went to my trusty Wal-Mart and bought a whole slew of eyeliners, shadows, lip liners, lip gloss, and other makeup items. Thank goodness for brands like Wet & Wild that are quality makeup with a reasonable price!

As Sara and I talked about using the makeup it occurred to me how fitting using the makeup was going to be. Every woman applies her makeup with her own tastes, strengths, and skill. Applying makeup is such a personal and intimate art form for each women. So the idea that these strong women would be using materials in which they are familiar and artists at using on themselves, that they would be using those techniques on me to give me and my baby love, energy and support just brought tears to my eyes. What a wonderful way to really personalize a belly painting even though it would be a collaborative effort.

Below are some pictures of the different women and their children and my children painting my belly at my Mother's Blessing!

Mason painting with the help of me and Sara

Sarah Painting

Landa Painting

Clare Painting

Group painting! LOL Clare, Mindy, and Sarah

Stephanie & Sara Painting

Mindy Painting

Sierra (Sara's daughter) painting

Isabella (Mindy's daughter) painting

Kaleb painting

Jasmyn Painting

The finished painting!

Front view
33 weeks pregnant

Side View
33 weeks pregnant

For pictures of the individual flowers, bugs, and berries you can view them here.

I also want to thank the ladies and the children at my Mother's Blessing for putting forth your energy and love and support that made me feel so loved and cherished.

Also a special thank you goes out to My husband Tim and Clare's husband Dale for watching the kids, cooking the food and being the best Hosts so that the ladies could focus on the Mother's Blessing. This would not have been possible without your help. Thank you!