Show~n~Tell

Ceramics have become a major hobby for me in the last year so I thought I'd share them with you. People ask me all the time if I would sell stuff, but I am NOT that confident in them at all. I mostly do them for myself and/or our home. This is just another collection to add to all my other collections in my house:)!! I collect anything with pugs just about, Thomes Kinkade puzzles, trip puzzles, 7 dwarfs, angels, and now Victorian dolls with fall colors. Unbelievably though I actually started ceramics when I was in middle school and that is what I started this post with. Enjoy:)!





Never got around to naming these 2 cats! These were done when I was in Middle School in one of my art classes. I loved art/crafts even back then, but now it is more available to me and has become a wonderful hobby! Am pretty impressed that I did this well with it back then though. There are flaws, but I'm proud of it!

This is a vase I actually made and painted in 8th grade I think. The colors changed once it was fired. It was suppose to be white with red and blue spots on it, but as you can see that's not what I got, but my name was on the bottom of it so we knew it was mine. I was very disappointed about it back then, but now it doesn't bother me at all. I actually like orange now!






This was my first project when I went to the ceramic shop. I saw 3 of the 7 dwarfs and that got my attention! They are my favorite characters of Disney. Phillip got me my first dwarf, Sleepy, when he was in Missouri when we were engaged and he was up there for Christmas with his family that year. From then on I was hooked worse than I was before. I had gotten hooked before we started dated when my dad and Rox took all of us kids to Disney World the first time and I got to see ALL 7 dwarfs walk in singing their song and got pictures and signatures of each one! Now my guest room is full of them:)!! Needless to say I enjoyed very much doing these dwarfs to add to my room!






I am definitely a collector and once I get hooked on a certain collection I usually do not pull away from it. Although I did let go of my Pilsbury Doughboy that I use to have in my kitchen, but it did not flow with the rest of my house and unfortunately no one sells him anymore either, so I needed to move on from that collection. An old collection that I have always enjoyed and kept since before Phillip and I got together was Angels. My Living Room and guest bathroom are done in angels and I think it is so elegant and the colors go with the new Victorian style I am working towards. These angels are called Molly, Winnie, and Isie (or Isabella). They are painted in my favorite wine color and they look great in our living room.





My collections start with my Cooking Collection. I had fun with these! No these do not have names as do all my other collections! Unfortunately these didn't even get dates on them because I honestly didn't think of it before I got them fired. Do not want to refire them just for that. All these pieces were done in food safe glazes with no toxic paints. Glenda, the ceramic shop owner, will not even let me paint a napkin holder in regular paints because of the napkins getting close to your mouth. She is very safe oriented when it comes to her ceramics. Slightly less colors to choose from, but they still make beautiful ceramics in the end.



Now if any of you know me at all you also know that I LOVE PUMPKIN PIE:)!! I ask for it every year for my birthday instead of a cake. I also love my dad's ice box cheesecake with blueberries, which he makes for my birthday every year as well. My Grandma usually makes the pumpkin and yes I had 2 different type pie/cake for my birthday every year if I can help it:)!! So with that when I saw this pumpkin pie holder I had to paint it:)! It was really simple to paint and it now sits on my china cabinet. I made Roxanne a Boysenberry Pie holder at the same time and it turned out really good, but did not get any pictures of it. Will have to do that later. These were glazed and fired. That's what makes them so shiney and hard to take pictures with:)!

I thought this salt/pepper set would be perfect for my Victorian theme and boy do we love them. Phillip says they are manly cause of how big and heavy they are. It took a whole canister of salt and pepper to fill these guys up and once I did that Phillip would not use anything else. I still had my regular sized ones out and he said no give me the manly ones!! It cracked me up! That is when I finally started putting my Doughboy stuff away. We are thrilled with the change!

This series is what convenced me to change my theme in my kitchen to Victorian, which I realized later that my whole house mostly goes off of the Victorian style really. Now my kitchen will flow much better with the rest of my house, which will be really nice. Anyway, I glazed and fired these canisters and now they sit on my high shelf for decoration. I have really enjoyed them too. Part of them is painted with my favorite color, wine!






This collection below is my Easter Collection. Did not have them done in time to put out this year for Easter, but will have them next year. Have a few more Easter pieces to paint as well to add to this collection, but not sure when I'll worry about getting to them as I am working so diligently on my Victorian stuff right now, but we'll see.


Now to tell you the names of these little dudes I have to start with the chick sitting on the brown rabbit's head. His name is Nester then Howie, Chester, and Peter Cottontail. Can you believe it I actually used a common known name for one of my rabbits, but he looked so much like the image I have always had in my head for Peter Rabbit that I had to give him the name!!

This was my first big item I had done before and he almost made me not ever want to dry-brush ever again! To make the different shades of gray come out in different spots I had to go over it so many times I lost count, but it was worth it in the end! I named him Oscar! Have a lot of pride in this guy! I just think he is so adorable:)!

This is Phillip's Easter Collection. This rabbit's name is Mr. Riquettes! Don't ask me where that name came from! It just kind of popped out of my mouth and Phillip liked it:)!

This series of rabbits Phillip worked on for a good while, but had really good results! He's definitely got talent in the painting area as well. Although he does not enjoy as much as I do. Snoozer, Dangle, and Rocky are their names. I'm sure you can figure out which name goes to which rabbit:)!!






Below is my Garden Collection so far! Use to have a Daisy in this collection, but it got broken and shattered to where there was no way we could repair it. Will just have to paint a new one later on. All these pieces looked great in my flower garden when I had it. Now they decorate my porch by themselves and still look very entertaining:)!! Even the UPS man says how much he likes them when he comes!


Now these I have not antiqued as of yet so I shouldn't have a picture of them yet, but I keep forgetting that they need to be finished! They are still cute to me though. Their purpose was to hold some venus fly traps for us, but so far no one has had them at the stores yet. We check every so often. Their names are Mavis and Mathis!

Since I enjoyed my sunflowers last year I had to paint some ceramic sunflowers. Their names are Mrs. Sunburst and Sonny!

This mushroom was so cute I just had to try and paint her. Picking out colors is sometimes harder than what you think, but it was fun! I named her Penelope, she just looked like a Penelope to me:)!

Phillip and I both did a tree trunk and stump together. Phillip did the stump and I did the trunk. We had a lot of fun doing these together. We named them Trunkton and Frumpy:)!!

Walley is my ogre pot that holds my plumeria plant that a friend gave me. In a year's time I will have to transplant the plant into a bigger pot. It is much bigger now than it is in the picture, MUCH BIGGER! Has not given me a beautiful yellow flower as of yet, but gorgeous nice big leaves. It is still a young plant though.

This is my lady ogre pot named Willa. Walley had to have a partner on the porch!!

This catipillar was done by Phillip. This was his first attempt at dry-brushing and he did an excellent job of it! We named him Mr. Jeepers!






All the above would not be possible if it wasn't for these 2 pieces below! Here is my palat and brush holder. The picture really doesn't do them justice for their colors. They are orange with yellow sparks on them. I love the colors! They were glazed and fired. I haven't had any problem with anyone getting mine mixed up with their's at the ceramic shop as of yet:)!!

Of course I have plenty more ceramics than what's listed, but do not have pictures of everything as of yet. I keep forgetting to get a picture of my manger scene, which in all honesty is one of my finiest works in collections. The wisemen are my favorite cause I used matallics and those are fun to use! Also have all the figurines and such that we, Phillip and I, made for the Dyer's. And I am still working on my Victorian figurines at this point and will do a post on them alone once I am done with them!

Hope you enjoyed my little hobby:)!

Gabe's Visit June 22-26, 2009

I hadn't realized how long it had been since we had Gabe over, but after this week it dawned on me that it's been quite a long while since his last visit. The first 2 days were the hardest just getting on some kind of routine with him. He did wonderfully it was me that couldn't keep up, hehehe!! By Thursday I was doing pretty good, but he was going home on Friday, of course! Isn't that how it always works! Here's the pictures I got from the week when I finally realized that hey I need to be taking pictures! That's how I keep my memories of each adventure! Enjoy!


This is the project we ended up working on for the week. Although I thought it would take longer than one day! This is the beginning pictures of Gabe's dolphins. As you can see he is wrapped up in Phillip's apron so that he wouldn't ruin his clothes. He looked like a kid chef:)!! It was cute.



I took Gabe swimming in our pool several times throughout the week and boy did he love it! We ended up out there 2 to 3 times a day! He would try to scarf his lunch and/or supper down to get out there faster. I'd have to explain to him that him joking wouldn't help us getting out there. Plus we had to wait to let our stomachs settle. I'd let him watch a short video to distract him during the waiting time:)! He looks older than 6 though doesn't he!




Gabe loved this little duck we had in the pool, but it carries chlorine it to help keep our pool clean. We have another smaller duck in the pool as well that is a thermometer. Gabe had a hard time not playing with them. I've got to get more toys for the pool.



Here's a great shot of Gabe swimming under water! He did an excellent job of swimming. I was very impressed with him on his skill level!



This is a good shot of both Phillip and Gabe! They make my pool look so much deeper than it really is:)!!



Got several shots of the puppies in the pool, but Gabe was only in a few of them. This is Tucker swimming with the guys. Those puppies would follow Gabe all around the pool!



Gabe is swimming with Sadie here. She doesn't like to get in as much as Tucker does nor does she seem to swim as easily as Tucker to me. Gabe loved having the puppies in the pool!







Once Gabe finish his dolphins I got some pictures outside with him and his dolphins he worked so hard on. O was he proud of them things! The last thing that was done was spraying them with the sealer and it just takes a few minutes to dry and that's why we were outside. He seemed to have had a really good time with this project!



We had a blast with Gabe for the week and are looking forward to his next visit. Hopefully it will be longer too. I loved having him here while Phillip was at work the most. The house wasn't so empty or lonely:)! It was sad to see him go home! Got to start thinking of some projects for us to work on when he comes back!

Our 9th Anniversary

On Saturday, June 13th, we decided to go out for our late Anniversary since I was in Las Vegas for the actual day, which was June 10th. We both wanted to do something outdoors and not spend money on just a meal, but have fun. So we went Goofy Golfing and had an absolute blast with it! We couldn't have asked for a better day and we got great pictures of it too, which makes it all the more memorable!

At the begining of our game there is these bridges we had to cross in order to get to some of the holes! It was a really neat setup, which made it all the more fun! We got some good shots on the bridge!





I thought this man-made waterfall over all the rocks was absolutely breath-taking! Had to have pictures taken with that in the background! Then Phillip got the bright idea of taking them diagonally and they turned out pretty good!






I added this one to the list because I thought it was cute. This octopus (however spelled) was right in the middle of the water and I thought it was a great character out there on the course!




Our of all the pictures we took at the Goofy Golf course this was our favorite! As you can see I like it so much that I changed the header of my blog to this picture. It turned out so well! This will be added to our wall of Anniversaries in our hallway for our 9th!!




There was one part of the game that we had to walk inside a cave to putt one hole and it had a waterfall cascading down on one side of the cave. We took the best shot we could of us in front of the waterfall, but you can't see it all that well in the background. We still liked the picture though! It was really neat scenery!




We are pretty much at the end of our game with these last 2 shots. We had another 2 or 3 holes left, but there was these really cool looking wooden stairs we were having to walk down to get to our next hole and so I thought it made for a good picture or two!



This has got to be my most favorite picture of Phillip to this day! I think he is so cute in this pose:)!! He was trying to be funny, which he was, but he didn't expect me to take it and I did:)!! I love it. This is him on the top of the same stairs I was on the bottom of. We met in the middle to swap out the camera!

This is what we did for our Anniversary and we had a blast with it. We went for ice cream at a specialty shop afterwards, which was really yummy too! It was called Bruster's and Phillip had a key lime pie waffle cone ice cream that he just loved and said it was his new favorite now! I got a hot fudge sundae with white raspberry truffle ice cream and it was out of this world! Raspberry is one of my favorite flavors anyway and this was really good!

It was a perfect Anniversary Day. We really enjoyed it and plan on doing it again in the near future!

The Narrows @ Zion National Park

Here is the beginning of our hike at the Narrows on Zion National Park. This was an incredible display of nature! I was in awe by the scenery!

This is part of our group getting ready to start. Don't you just love Uncle Norman's dew-rag (however spelled)!! He didn't keep it on very long, but for the length of time he did you should have seen the looks he got or at least that we acted like he was getting:)!! Makes him look like a mean biker, but he is nothing like that at all so it made it funny!! We all had lots of fun on this trip together.




This is what the ground looked like the whole way, solid rocks! There were very few and far between spots of sand/mud to walk on which was refreshing, but like I said there were not many places like that. I thought this picture was pretty though. It reminded me of the rocks by the Lighthouses in Maine when we went up there to go camping. Although we never walked on them. We only saw them from a far off distance. I did see pictures and they look just like this is seems. I even have a puzzle of the rocks up there. Amazing how you can find simularities between a lush humid place and a desert!




And here's the reason why this place is called the Narrows because there is a narrow path between the mountains! Isn't it just gorgeous! I couldn't believe this was actually my camera taking this picture. It looks too beautiful for a regular camera:)!!




Here we are all just walking through the rocks and water. We made a zigzag trail through it because we were trying to stay where the shallow parts were. So this is pretty much what we looked like the whole time we hiked.




At this point we hit the deepest water we had walked through. This water is melted snow and is so cold it aches so imagine letting that cold of water get all the way up to your chest! Yeah, that was rough, but fun!

This is also the point where Scott and Laurie (Uncle Norman's friends) had to turn back because it was too deep for the kids to try to cross. Fortunately, for us it didn't last long, but the kids would have had a hard time with it that deep and having to walk on rocks as well.

Aunt Diane was the one who inspired the picture taking at this point though. Boy was she loud when that water got higher and higher on her! The pictures of her coming out of it are priceless:)!! You can see Dalston smiling at the situation too!





I thought this was a good shot of mom! I like all the rocks and scenery behind her. She did very well on this hike!




Obviously I didn't get many shots of myself since I was the one with the camera, but I saw this beautiful waterfall coming right down the mountain side and had to have a shot with it. So I gave the camera to mom and hiked across the rough water to get to it. Really made my hike a little harder to get over there cause no one else went that way except Dalston and me, but it was so worth the waterfall though. I like this picture. Waterfalls are one of my favorite sceneries too!




This is the end of our hike here. I actually finished first and was able to sit on top of a stone wall and watch everyone come in and I would holler their name and when they looked up in surprise I'd take a shot! It was quite amusing:)!!

In second place came Dalston! His picture actually turned out pretty nice! I thought it was a good shot of him!

In third place was Uncle Norman (mom's brother)!


In forth place was my mom, Sheila!


In fifth place was Dalston's friend that I will not try to mess up on spelling, but she is a character to hang out with:)!!


And in sixth place was Aunt Diane (mom's sister)!

Everyone really did a great job on this hike! It was not simple, it was quite tough and we were all quite proud of each other! Of course that's after we all thawed out and realized it was over, hehehe!!

This was a wonderful experience that I am glad to have on my list of things I've done, but I have no intention of ever doing it again:)!! It was an amazing challenge! Although Phillip says I will be doing it again because he wants me to go with him when he goes. I told him Dalston and Michael Fedele could handle my spot!!