Christmas pots

I've been sitting on these pictures of my lastest work because they were all Christmas gifts or birthday gifts.

This is a colander I made for my brother and his wife. It looks fine in the picture but in real life it didn't turn out at all like I wanted so I'll be remaking it...

This colander was for my sister for her birthday. That's not trick photography, it truly is that warped. Something that has me a bit perplexed. But the glaze turned out nice. Love that spray booth.

Two mugs for Jason and Jess. I was really happy with how the glaze came out on these.



Two mugs for my sister and her husband. Again the glaze turned out great. Up close you can pick up a real deep blue on top of the black.

Two mugs for my parents. Again, great results.



And these mugs are for my father-in-law. Allow me to explain the one on the right. Several weeks ago my FIL was admiring the mugs I made for my Grandma and Aunt (in the mail soon, this week probably!) and my comedian husband made a smart remark about how his father's nose was too big for those mugs, that it would be dipping into his coffee (interesting as Adrian has his father's nose... but that's beside the point, apparently). So Adrian came to me wanting a nose mug for his dad, where his nose would rest comfortable on the outside of the lip. With a deep sigh, I agreed. However due to the shrinkage that happens between making the mug and the final fired piece I had to totally guess on the size to make it, hoping what I ended up with was a good fit. And boy is it ever.
To demonstrate...

Christmas

Finally the Christmas photos are here.


My sweet new nephew Marcus had his first Christmas. I think he enjoyed it.
Adrian and I had our 2nd annual Mouws and Mistletoe on the 20th. Another success. Thanks for coming out everyone!


This was a common sight throughout the month.

This was Marcus at our family tree decorating. My family has the coolest tradition that even though we've all long since moved out of our parent's house we all still come back to decorate the family tree with all the creepy old ornaments we made as children, including, yes, the construction paper gingerbread man that I ate the incredibly old, petrified raisin buttons off of when I was little. I still get crap for that and I'm thinking, why wasn't I supervised, eh people?


Every year Christmas Eve has me making a couple hundred tamales with the women on Adrian's side. Then we all gather at his grandparent's tiny house for stockings and a gift exchange. The chaos is crazy but wonderful. Following that we come back to our house for yet another exchange between Adrian's mom and siblings. It's always a VERY late night.

Christmas morning has us at my parent's house for more family gifting fun.

The day after Christmas held more gifting, this time with Adrian's father, sister and her kids.


Finally after all was said and done, Adrian and I both felt a bit like Nacho, desiring a much needed Christmas nap.

Merry Christmas

Sitting in the calm between storms (his family and my family) and before I collapse into bed, I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas. But don't forget that it has NOTHING to do with all that crap we stuff under a tree and all the stress and anxiety that goes with it. It has everything to do with a man born to be our Savior. May He bless and keep you safe in the coming year. He has done MUCH for me in this one.

Husband humor follow-up

Just to add to his perceived hilarity, the other night when Adrian was hanging the final portion of our cabinets (a great little end piece with shelves for my pottery-- pictures forthcoming) he pulls out his trusty stud-finder, right? Turns it on and starts rubbing it on his chest as it starts beeping, "See?? See?" Yes honey, I see. You're a stud alright.

Husband Humor

Adrian is completing our kitchen (nearly two years later...) and today while putting up our new cabinet box we had some technical difficulties in locating the wall studs. So he took a quick trip to Wal-Mart for one of the fancy kind that beeps over the studs...

Here's what he tells me tonight:

"So I was in the aisle looking for those stud finders, right? I turned the corner and they all started going off..."

Deck the halls

Adrian and I spent the weekend decorating the house. Christmas is what this house was built for so despite all the turmoil in our lives lately, this, we decided, is a must. We also discussed the possibility of going fake this year. Our fireplace frequently spits embers over our gate and can make Christmas with a real tree somewhat scary. So we had the discussion and decided if we were going to go fake then we needed to go big. We found this 9-foot tree that Adrian really liked at Costco, and even though it's got white lights, which I'm not wild about, it really is pretty awesome. It's got some pretty fancy real-looking branches on the outer edges. It's the most convincing fake tree I've seen and with as much as we spent last year on our very large real tree, this seemed to be a sound investment.