a favorite thrown mug...



Snapshot of one of my large clay mugs

 I never got around to showing you pictures of the final stages of our 25-piece clay project. I plan to get my photos together and do that this week.  Some were not glazed, some broke in the kiln, etc. - but I did take pictures on our last day of class.

The photo at the top is one of the 18 mugs I threw on the wheel. This is one of the larger ones. Luckily for me I was able to use most of them as Christmas gifts or just gifts for anyone who wanted to take one home.  This particular glaze combination turned out to be one of my favorites and I made several mugs with it. It's slate, celadon, and butter in an overlapping pattern and I even rubbed some of the glaze off in spots (and fired it in the reduction kiln).  As you can tell, I tend to like the heavy 'rustic' look.

Now I have to tell you a funny story that happened this morning.  Early this morning (between 5 and 6am) I was dreaming... and in my dream I was at a sort of camp ground where I was climbing up this cliff  (and dragging a bike - yeah? well, it was a dream?) Anyway, an animal came into the campground area and in order to scare it off, I jumped up and made a lot of noise yelling, growling, hissing and spitting. It scared the animal alright and nearly gave DH (sleeping next to me) a heart attack!

He reached over - as by now I was sitting straight up - asking me if I was alright?  Remembering my dream and realizing what happened, I started laughing... at the absurdity of the situation and at the fact that poor DH must have thought I was having some sort of seizure. And you must remember that we are kind of inundated in animals around here - my having been in the Veterinary field, my youngest son a Curator at the Zoo, daughter with a ranch full, and our indoor and backyard menagerie, etc. - so dreams having to do with them are not uncommon. 

Waking up laughing isn't bad either... (altho DH may not agree in this case).  ;)

a first Christmas...

1st Christmas

Christmas 2012 has passed and the New Year 2013 is upon us!  We don't know what it will bring, but "hope springs eternal"...   I'm not worried about the world ending, nor the fiscal cliff.  I'm not worried about whether we will have enough money to last us through retirement nor whether our health will continue.  These things will always be a concern, but not a worry.

The important thing is that we have our friends and family around us and our new baby grand daughter is celebrating her first Christmas with us.  Life is good.

As it happened (and I mentioned this already on my 'Cats, Coffee, and Chocolate' site), we celebrated Christmas Sunday evening this year due to the impending snow and ice supposedly coming our way Christmas day.  This allowed those who needed to get back on the road to leave before the weather got bad.  It worked rather well. 

The kids got to open gifts ahead of time  (which we have never done before - but they certainly didn't mind). And since both older grand kids got 26' mountain bikes, they were also able to ride them Christmas Eve morning.  It wouldn't have been possible to do this Christmas Day as it was pouring rain (before it started snowing).

So... as it probably was in almost every one's home, we ate, laughed, ate some more, sat by the fire, ate even more, talked,... and passed the baby around. She was a little angel... smiling most of the time, but frowning with all the flashes from cameras in her tiny face.

The cats had a pretty good Christmas too  as everyone had left before Christmas morning so they had the whole house to themselves.  I wrote (and posted pictures of them) about this on my other site ("Cats, Coffee...").

Now I'm going to post a picture of our family taken all together (which is a difficult thing to do as they 'act up' and I get 6 silly pics to every good one - but that's normal too I suppose). The silly ones are fun to look at, but not exactly what you want to post.

These are kids and grand kids with the exception of one son-in-law that was home sick and one grandson that was elsewhere at the time.  We tried to take another over by the Christmas tree, but everyone was acting silly and none turned out too great.

So here's wishing all of you out there a Happy and Safe 2013! 

Jack in the box...

Jack in Christmas box!

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of you out there!  I've been a bit behind in my reading and posting... but I promise to catch up after Christmas.  I love blogging and commenting and love hearing from my blogger friends. 

Have a wonderful safe holiday!

crises passed...

Our personal crises has passed. Thank God.  And thank all of you out there so much for your thoughts and prayers. You have no idea how much they meant to us... as well as your comments and concerns.  And I just 'couldn't' write about it... somehow writing about it would make it real... and it just couldn't be real.

Our son called us 2 weeks ago extremely upset.  They had just been informed that their new precious baby girl had failed the blood tests taken at birth and what that could mean. Scary to the max. The tests had to be repeated immediately. We were devastated to say the least. But as I've always believed... thoughts and prayers are powerful!

Yesterday evening the doctor called to let them know that all the new tests came out 'normal'.  We are elated!  And even if some may consider the whole situation a result of a false positive, I prefer to consider it our own Christmas miracle.

don't know what to say...

I don't know what to say, yet feel compelled to say 'something'... 

Having a hard enough time dealing with our own situation and still in limbo over it, but now this senseless shooting - unbelievable, yet real. Trying hard not to think about the sorrow enveloping those families, but sending loving thoughts and prayers their way.

please continue...

Just want to thank all of you for your prayers and good thoughts. We really really appreciate it. I know it will help. The words 'hope and prayer' mean so much more at times like these.  But please continue...

a request...

I have a simple, but sincere request for prayer (and/or good thoughts) for our family this week.

Something has happened and we need all the prayers and good thoughts we can get. I believe that our prayers and our thoughts are powerful, so please send some our way....  
           
with heartfelt thanks, rian

Christmas Tree...



Christmas tree 2012

 I'm still playing with Picasa... thus, the blue tint.  As you can see, our tree decorations have been minimized over the years. Since the  kids have grown, we have eliminated the tinsel and garlands. Now we make due with the tiny white lights and ornaments that mean something (either the kids or grand kids made them or were given to them, some came from our parents' tree, etc.)... and of course we have the unbreakable ones at the bottom for the cats to play with. As we get older, we may also have to minimize the tree size... but so far we have always had one of the boys around to help us get it into the house.

I started this post yesterday, but had to get to Yoga class then over to the doctor's to get my flu shot.  Intended to finish it when I got back home, but ran out of time.  After picking up grandson at school and cooking supper (Chicken Tetrazinni), I was wiped out... and fell asleep on the sofa. When I got up to go to bed, my arm where I had gotten the shot was throbbing. During the night my arm really hurt as well as my head... so this morning I may have to ditch my original plans which was the pottery studio and another doctor visit this afternoon (we try to get them all in before the end of the year because of the insurance deductibles).  However, I just got up and had some coffee and a Tylenol, so we shall see.

The rest of my 'huge mugs' were out of the kiln on Monday. The ones that were in the oxidation kiln came out OK... not exactly what I hoped, but OK.  The last 2 are still bisque, but I'm glazing them in the same colors (Slate, Celadon, and either Butter or Tamaku - sp?).  But I will fire these in reduction.
Once done, I will post a picture.  The picture below is a ceramic rose I made... just for fun.




ceramic rose



And just FYI:   Our 'baby girl' (new grandbaby) is doing fine.  She's a week old today! Thanks again for all your congrats and good wishes...