In August of 2007, I was asked to paint an ornament for the White House Christmas tree, representing Sequoia National Park. My first thought was “Shoot! Another freebie!” I was told an invitation to a reception at the White House would come with the ornament, and I thought, “So? I have to pay for that too!” My friend Lisa told me I would be nuts to turn this opportunity down, and Michael said he’d be happy to come to the White House with me. So, I began painting.                                                    

At the time the call came, I was working on a painting of Sequoia trees in the snow.  I got a few little ornaments and tried the same design on one in acrylic paint, but it dried way too fast! I tried oil paint on another, and that worked well.  Eventually, a large shiny gold ornament arrived. It looked like glass, and I was afraid of dropping it. I put layer after layer of white paint on it, carefully handling it as if would break, because if that happened  what would I do?? During one of these layers, my thumb dented the thing a little bit and I realized it was plastic! That took a load of worry off my mind! When it was finished, my neighbor Robin came over to take photos of me holding it so that the size would be evident.You can see this is no ordinary ornament – it was big, which made it much easier to paint than my little practice ones!      There was a little difficulty about the reception because no date was given and reservations needed to be made. We painters were given a fax number to send any questions, so I sent a note asking when the reception was and how tight the deadline for mailing the ornament was. As I was frantically trying to program in the fax number so a response could be received by my fax machine, the phone rang. “Cabinart, this is Jana”, I answered. “This is Bob at The White House”, came the response. “Hi Bob,” said I, ever so casually. To be continued. . .