The following blog may include affiliate links. Please see my affiliate disclosure page to understand what that means. We were given this workshop for free, but not paid. All thoughts and opinions are my own and are not represented by Board and Brush.

Galentine’s Day. Yep. You read that right! It’s not a typo! Galentine’s Day is on the rise and I’m all for it. What is it you ask? In recent years, many have considered February 13th “Galentine’s Day”, A holiday very similar to Valentine’s Day, but instead of celebrating your significant other, you celebrate all of the lovely women in your circle, your tribe, your squad…whatever you call it these days! This year, I felt it was super appropriate to celebrate my friend Brittany for Galentine’s Day. We are both busy on the actual day, but thankfully Board and Brush Modesto has workshops all week no matter what day it is!

If you don’t know Brittany, she’s been my best friend for 8 years and she recently got engaged on our trip to Disneyland in December! She asked me to be her Matron of Honor in January and though that was TOTALLY NOT EXPECTED (can you sense the sarcasm?), I was still very excited and honored to be trusted with that title! She has watched everyone in our circle get engaged, walk down the aisle, and have babies over the last almost decade and it’s finally her turn. We are all SO excited for her and look for any excuse to celebrate her, which led me to partnering with Board and Brush Modesto to give a few reasons why they’re the best place to celebrate the lovely woman (or women!) in your life this Galentine’s Day!

1) A fun group activity you can do with two or twenty friends!

My favorite part about Board and Brush is that you can all buy seats in the same workshop no matter how many there are in your girl gang! When you purchase your seat, you can list who you want to be sat by. It’s not always guaranteed, but it gives the sweet women at the workshop an idea of a seating chart once they’re setting your class up! When you show up, your materials will already be laid out in your designated spot, and they’ll even write your name on the table to double check you know where you’re supposed to be! You all can pick your own projects, but I suggest all doing the same project your first time! Brittany and I did and it was so fun to see how differently they turned out! It was also nice to always be on the same step so we could help each other if needed.

2) Anyone can make something beautiful!

Brittany and I are not artistic by any means. A stick figure is about the craziest thing we can both draw, so our hopes for how our signs were gonna come out were not the highest. We walked up to a pile of raw, unstained boards and looked at each other like “Oh no. What did we get ourselves into?!” LOL. The thought of not only staining, but assembling the many pieces of this sign was very intimidating. Thankfully, the instructor and all of the assistants were incredible at explaining each step and made something that once seemed scary, FUN! We started looking forward to how each other’s signs would look after each step and that was another cool thing about doing the same project – we were always working on the same piece of our project and could compare or share fun techniques we each found! By the end, our signs looked professional! We couldn’t believe it!

3) So much customization!

I absolutely loved the wide selection of paint colors Board and Brush had to choose from! There were about 10 shades of yellow and I’m not even exaggerating! They also have glitter, metallics, and more! You can really make any project your own and it’s so much fun to see everyone’s pieces come to life. There were also 8 different stains you could choose from, and they even had an example board so you could see how most paint colors would show up on each shade of stain. I really enjoyed picking out my colors! My project was already in honor of Angelo and I celebrating 5 years married, so I picked our wedding colors! Brittany did something similar with hers, but her project was themed for her and Carl’s 1 year dating anniversary since they don’t have a wedding date yet.

4) Hard work pays off!

I said these workshops were fun and SO rewarding, but I never said they were easy! A beginner (like myself!) will flourish in these classes as long as you pay attention and take each step at your own pace. This workshop was three hours long! There’s many many steps and you WILL use all three hours with very little time in between each step for free time (though there’s a bar that assistants can bring you drinks from in between drying coats!) I found that I did best being half a step behind most of the other people in the class. I didn’t stress myself out and I always knew what was coming up. By the end of the class I had caught up and was on the same level as everyone. I am not going to lie, I was exhausted by the end of this workshop! Woodcrafting is hard work! Add in the fumes from the stain, phew. I needed a nap. But that absolutely doesn’t mean it wasn’t rewarding, exciting, and so much fun every step of the way! I now have a beautiful handmade masterpiece that will hang in my home forever. For less than $100, that’s a steal in my opinion.

5) Fun memories to last forever!

No matter if you attend a workshop for a girls night, date night, or self care/alone time, you will make memories to last a lifetime! I love the photos I have with Brittany from this class! We were so out of our comfort zone but that made this workshop SO much more fun and exciting. We documented the whole thing on my instagram stories and I saved it to a highlight if you’d like to watch our entire visit!

If you have a Board and Brush near you, I highly recommend going! It was so much more fun than I even imagined and I’m so glad I got to take my best friend out for some early Galentine’s fun! Board and Brush has multiple classes each week and they change all the time, so definitely check out their website to find out what’s going on near you! I’d love to hear what project you’d do if you booked a class! Let me know in the comments or over on my instagram!