Pawsome Painted Window Scenes with Dogs (and Cats)

Do you include your dogs in your holiday traditions? Since they're part of the family, of course dogs should join in the festivities too. Jackie from Pooch Smooches and I thought it would be fun to trade some of our holiday traditions on our blogs today. I wrote about Family Photo Christmas Cards with the dogs. And here's her post about a great tradition painting these pawsome scenes on windows! So, without further ado, here's Jackie!

 Guest Post by Jackie from Pooch Smooches

Thanks, Peggy for inviting me to talk about a fun holiday tradition we’ve been doing for years in my family!

It’s a bit difficult to involve the dog in most of our Christmas traditions (for example, our dogs have never wanted to watch It’s a Wonderful Life with us!), so sometimes you have to settle for involving them indirectly. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing at my sister Kathy’s house for the past decade or so.

 My other sister, Jean, is a fabulous artist, so every year shortly after Thanksgiving, we meet up at Kath’s ready to paint her windows, always with a dog-theme that features Kath’s rescue pup, Indy.

Here's Indy as Max, with The Grinch

 In this one, we have angel Bailey (my beagle) in the left window and angel Lady/Dannie (we have 2 angel Goldens in the family, one Jean's and one belonged to my brother) on the right. Indy's halo is attached, since she's... no angel.

Bark the herald Pooches sing!

Here we have carolers singing, "Dog rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing at you bay," with Indy in the period-piece costume...

...And Jean's dog, Roxie, in the side window: 

An ode to Dickens with Indy as Tiny Tim: 

It's hard to decide which is my favorite (I really like the Grinch one...) but if I had to pick just one, this rendition of A Christmas Story is pretty darn cute! (With Indy, of course, playing the part of Ralphie!) 

"All I want for Xmas is an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!"

And of course, the squirrel and the opossum (Indy's nemeses) tell her, "You'll shoot your eye out dog!" Then, on the side window, we depicted the "triple dog dare" of sticking your tongue on the pole:

And this is the one we just did a couple of weeks ago, with Indy and my other sister's cat, Topi on the left:

Part of this tradition involves going outside every, oh, say 5 minutes (we paint the inside of the windows, but write the lettering on the outside) to say, "Oh it looks so cute!" (The paints look so different from the inside, that you really do have to step outside to check your work, but not every 5 minutes...)

I did my own windows at our old house once as well, with a pup theme, but our new house has very few windows facing the street, so there's no point painting the sliding glass doors just for me and the hubs to enjoy! Anyway, here's that window that I painted for the Christmas after we'd lost our angel Bailey and just adopted Abby.

"Checking the list to see who is naughty [puppy Abby] and nice [angel Bailey]"

If you’d like to try painting your own windows, here are some tips:

1)      Supplies: tempura paints, a Sharpie pen, some brushes. For the brushes, the cheap kind at the craft store work fine. Be sure to get nice fat ones (we use round brushes, with the face of the brush around the size of a nickel), or else it will take you forever to fill in. 

2)      Outline the design first in Sharpie (you can always clean off the Sharpie and start over if it doesn’t come out right the first time), and then fill in with the paint. But don’t load too much paint up on your brush, as you don’t want it to run.

3)      It will likely look streaky and ugly from inside, but go outside and check – it always looks much different on the outside. (It’s up to you if you want to check it every 5 minutes and say “Oh, how cute!” every time. It adds to the enjoyment, but is not required.)

4)      Dogs are MUCH easier to paint than people. (Flesh tone is so hard! That’s why so much of Santa’s face is hidden in the last drawing!) If a dog is too hard to paint – try something easy: bows, ornaments, snowflakes, evergreen boughs. Look at your Christmas cards for ideas. A few paw-prints or dog bones with red ribbons will add an easy doggy-feel to your design.

5)      If you want to add words, use a Sharpie on the outside of the window (much easier than writing backwards on the inside!).

6)      Clean up involves LOTS of paper towels and some Windex. If you used a Sharpie on the outside, WD-40 or nail polish remover helps get it off easier. Windex alone requires more elbow grease. (The outside is harder to clean, maybe because the pen gets “baked on” when it’s exposed to the elements.)

Happy Holidays! We'd love to hear how you involve your dogs in your traditions! And don't forget to jump over to Pooch Smooches today and read my guest post about one of our holiday traditions!

* Check out Jackie's hysterical novel, What the Dog Ate!