Christa Jellison's home is a work in progress - artwork, that is.
The artist's Colfax residence is covered with painted scenes she's completed over the past half a dozen years.
Her latest wall paintings include an alpine scene of a family carrying home a Christmas tree through the snow. A majestic peak looms in the distance.
The inspiration for it came from an unusual source.
"That one I saw on a credit card and I changed the mountain and put the dog in it," Jellison said recently.
A smaller painting nearby is of delicate flowers with Japanese characters spelling out "universal energy" in black with her name below in red characters.
"The flowers are hibiscus," she said. "(The written characters) are symbols from the Reiki (a healing movement)."
Beyond the house, an entire wall of an outbuilding has been transformed into an African jungle, with a tiger in the foreground, surrounded by a bear, monkey, squirrel and bird, as a deer drinks from a pond below a waterfall.
"I took animals from children's books and put them all together," she said. "There are seven animals in that picture."
Jellison completed the latest pictures in September and October, including adding butterflies to the garage door.
There are balloons on one side, a lighthouse scene on the right and now the butterflies, she explained.
Jellison uses the same oil paints that she uses on her canvas paintings that hang indoors.
The designs take about a month to dry, she said. And the end result has proven to be very resilient.
"Those that I did earlier are still there," she said. "I don't put any protection over them. Some of them have been out there for five or six years, and are still like day one. I amaze myself. The sun hasn't faded them. They're just like I put them there."
Her inspiration for turning her exterior walls into works of art was simple logic.
"I wanted a larger picture than I had canvasses," she said. "I was looking at my house. There were big garage doors. So I thought, 'I have these wonderful big white garage doors and I have these walls that are just great. Why don't I try to paint on there?'"
The concept wasn't new to her. Jellison is from the north of Germany, but is very familiar with Bavaria in the south, where numerous homes' exteriors contain painted scenes.
The paintings on her house and outbuildings now number a dozen, but she's not finished yet.
"I have a few more ideas," she said. "I'm going to make a painting with quails on it. I have to have some quails somewhere."
Home & Garden's Gloria Young can be reached at gloriay@goldcountrymedia.com.
