Handpainting a black and white photo with Adobe Photoshop CS3

When I was a baby my Mum entered herself and me in a Mother & Daughter portrait competition and won second-runner up. As a prize she was given a framed photo of me that was black and white and hand painted. When I was younger I used to look at the image and wondered how it would be done and loved looking at other vintage photos that had been lovingly hand painted for an intriguing effect.

As a member of Fix My Pic group on Flickr I like to turn my hand to using Photoshop (and other programs) to 'fix' or alter the photo of someone who has submitted their photo to be 'fixed' .

This week I came across a black and white photo and the brief from the photographer was:

I know it seems silly to ask to have this one fixed if its in black and white, but i thought maybe someone could come up with a killer idea?

Here's the photo to be fixed:

"checking in" by Today4u [?]
 

and here is my fix:

"Today4u notmypic fixmypic photoshopped" by vanessapr [?]
 

And here is how I did it.