Sunday, February 28, 2010

Your kid ate what?

I'm sitting here this evening watching TLC's show called "your kid ate what?". They asked my son Levi to do the show and he turned them down. They wanted to come and do interviews with him, the doctors etc. Levi had 2 reasons for turning them down, #1 he didn't remember what happened and #2 he didn't want to look like an idiot, teenagers... *pfft*.

So anyway, he is 17 now, but when he was 2 we had an incident. We had settled down one afternoon to watch tv, Levi was laying on his back propped on a pillow on the floor in front of me, I was sitting on the sofa. I glanced down at him and could see he obviously had something in his mouth, so I ordered him to sit up and spit whatever it was out. When he sat up, whatever was in his mouth went down his throat. I picked him up and instantly I knew he was choking. I grabbed the phone dialed 911 and started doing the Heimlich on him. I explained to 911 what happened and that I was preforming the Heimlich, the 911 operator paged the ambulance. While on the phone the object in his mouth came out, it was the plastic nut from my dog crate.
After the plastic nut came out, he still couldn't breathe, something else was in his throat. So I continued to work on him until finally he cried, more importantly he could breathe again! I hung up with 911, canceled the ambulance and I took him to the hospital. They did and x-ray and when the doctor came in with the x-ray film, I'll never forget what he said, he said "Well.... Mrs. Hopkins, if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it. Let me show you what we have."

I was pretty dumbfounded after I saw this, oh yes, he swallowed a steel bolt! After a few days he "passed it" and went on to continue to put stuff in his mouth that he shouldn't. We measured one of the other bolts from the crate, the head was 3/4 of an inch across and I believe the length was 1.5 inches long. The doctor gave me a copy of the x-ray just because I think it blew his mind, I know it blew mine.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Yay! I made the Etsy blog

I was listed in the Etsy blog today! They did a section called Reuse, Reduce, Recycle and they were kind enough to include one of my travel mugs.

(the picture is a link to the blog article if you'd like to read it)

Chicken anyone?


My prototype chicken cooker fresh from the kiln and then fresh from the oven, it worked wonderfully.
To use, add broth, beer or wine to the center tube also add your herbs or seasoning, sit your chicken on so that it is standing up by inserting the tube in the body cavity and bake. The chicken will become infused with the herbs and flavoring and be very juicy.
I've decided to make the bowl part larger so you can add potatoes or veggies. This was a pretty big chicken, but I would like to have more room to add extra goodies.


Sunday, February 21, 2010

Stamping

On a whim yesterday, I made this set. The tray is 10"x4" and the dishes are 3". I really like how these are coming along, now to pick a color...




This little piggy

100 years ago when I was in high school I learned how to do hand building with clay. I was never a big fan of hand building, but I do love to hand build when adding elements to a thrown piece.
Don't tell.... but I'm making a load of these piggy banks for my 3 nieces and nephew for Easter.
I'll be listing some in my Etsy shop too :o)

I thought it would be fun to just combine a few pictures into a little movie showing how this piggy bank was born and of course I had to insert silly music ;o)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Sometimes I slip

Where does the time go? I haven't updated this since... wow it's been over a month. Ok so I'll cut straight to it. Things have been so busy, well.... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;o)
Since I last posted I had my 40th birthday (January 13th).
I've been busy making pottery stuffs, I hate to say pots, because I don't make many of those. But I did turn out some super cute cupcake plates. Cupcake plates are totally consuming my time, I love everything about them. I altered one to look like a flower, OH I should take a picture, I'll add that to my to-do list.

I've also been making some birdy cups in a few sizes just to see what size I like. I bisque fired them this week, now I have to decide what color glaze to use. I'm thinking red and blue? Well see...


I sometimes fool around with ceramic molds and do some slip casting. I have a mold for a vintage 1965 piggy bank mold, that honestly I really hadn't thought much about using at all, until I got this thought in my head...
Salt pigs are pretty popular, if you aren't familiar with what a salt pig is, it's basically a vessel that you keep salt in near where you cook. I'm a shaker girl myself but I thought, how funny would it be to have a salt pig that really looked like a pig? (google salt pig and you'll see what I mean, they don't look like pigs at all). I poured the mold a few times and made a couple salt pigs and honestly I didn't think they would sell, I listed one and within 2 days it was sold, I love that. Not only that it sold fast which was great, but I love that someone else loved it, that made my day. Here's a picture of the cutie.

Well I better get back to glazing, I'm glazing my first round of cupcake plates now. I'm so excited to see them finished.