Let's face it...

I made a few faces. 

Oh wait... I was talking about terracotta faces! Not my silly face! 

I made a large press mold for the face itself. After I remove the face from my mold I decorate it. 

In the end I have these beautiful Garden Goddesses. They would be at home hanging on any wall or outside near your garden.

Love

May only Kindness cross your lips.

Have faith in the words you speak

I'll be listing these lovely ladies in the Etsy store tomorrow. 

Somebody That I Used To Know

I love his mouth. Is that weird?

The good, the bad and the ugly and...

It's been a while since I blogged, geeze so  much has happened I'm not sure where to begin. I have good and I have bad so I reckon I'll just start with the... bad? Ok so at the end of August we made a emergency road trip to Maryland after being contacted by one of my oldest and dearest friends Allison, that her dad had pancreatic cancer and stomach cancer and was given less than 2 weeks. Her dad Gordon was also my husbands high school teacher and really helped guide Mike into his profession Gordon always claimed that my husband was his favorite student ever and Gordon really meant a lot to him, he was Mike's mentor. Gordon passed away while we where there. My other bad news is my father in law has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I can't put into words how I feel, I love my father in law dearly and this just sucks. The other bad, well kinda good, but bad news is my mom had surgery yesterday on her leg, she's been walking around for over a year with a broken leg. Her original doctor put a rod in her leg after she broke it in a car accident, well he made the rod too long and her bone never healed. It's a mess. I tried to call her but haven't heard anything back which worries me, she lives in Florida so it's not like I can just stop by, but I know her husband would call if something was wrong. I'm sure she's probably just doped up and probably hating life right now. I hate waiting. But at least she'll be fixed.

Quick change of subject wanna see my foot? It's gross. Let me tell ya how I did this trick, I was carrying a load of laundry out to the garage, there is one step down into the garage and of course I couldn't see where I was going because I had my arms full of clothes and when I took the step down into the garage BAM! instant pain. I stepped on something but didn't know what, so I held my breath, limped over to the washer and loaded it and came back into the house before I looked at my foot. Well turns out that a plastic cover to something on our lawn mower with screws sticking up out of it was laying in the floor and that's what got me. The screw head was sticking up and when I stepped in it the screw bent and drove the screw head up into the arch of my foot which left me with a 3/4 inch wide gash which was equally as deep and boy did I struggle to hold it together. I irrigated it myself and cleaned it really well, it was pretty intense. In any event, it's healing pretty well, the bruising has finally gone away, the whole arch of my foot was bruised black and blue.
This is shortly after it happened (if you read my blog regularly you know I'm gonna show you my boo-boo's and if you don't read me regularly... guess what? I show my boo-boo's).

Ok so moving right along. 

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Check this out, I can't tell you how much this picture makes me laugh when I look at it.

My Precious

OK So switching gears now that I've grossed you out. Wanna see what I've been working on? I've give you a peek. Here is one of the Berry bowls I finished trimming today.

And I did this bowl today. 

And here is a quickly peek at some boxes and soap dispensers drying out. 

I have projects all over my studio in the drying phase. I've switched what type of clay I use which kind of makes me nervous and I have 4 new glazes that I just mixed so that adds to my worry. Of course most all potters tell you to test before you glaze your pots. I'm one of those people that just says screw it, glaze everything and see what happens.
I also took a try at making Christmas ornaments on the wheel, here are 2 samples of what I ended up with.

Ok So now do you wanna know my really, really BIG news? 

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited I could bust.

In January I will have a new name. 

I'll still be Denise to friends and family 

and Mom to my kids

but in January I'll also be known as

GRANDMA!!!!  

and guess what else? 

It's a BOY!

Edible clay? Ooooo

My husbands birthday was a few days ago, anyone that knows me knows that I love birthdays (not my own of course haha), in my household we not only celebrate birthdays but we also do birthday eve and believe me, we all milk it for all it's worth. This year I got a little crafty with my husbands cake. Just to give you some background info, my whole family goes caving and my husband and oldest son are both on the cave and cliff rescue team for our county. Well obviously that's exactly where my mind went when I came up with this.

I wish you could see the sparkles :o( 

Caver resting against stalagmites

Cave accident! Call rescue! (haha you know I had to play with it)

 I mixed 2 cakes mixes and made the cake marbled, the caver and formations are made of rice crispy treats and covered in fondant. It was soooo yummy.

My hand has been giving me trouble lately, I tried to get a descent picture so you can see my knuckle.

That is a knot that has come up on my hand, it looks like another knuckle and hurts when I work too much with my hands or if I put pressure on it. I've had problems with that whole knuckle area of my hand since my unfortunate run in with a stubborn goat, he tried to head butt me and ended up pinning my hand against a pole. I've been trying to take it easy hoping that the knot would go down, no such luck.

I've hatched some new birdies!

It's been a while since I made any of these babies. I'm glazing them now and they will be fired in my next kiln load.

Back from vacation in one piece

Sitting on the beach in the dark reading a book with my headlamp on and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see a sea monster that has come to kill me and drag me off to the sea monster baby nest so I can be shared. I jumped, my heart skipped a beat and then I discovered it was a tackle box and the shadow of my own foot. True story. Then I look up and notice I'm alone, the 3 guys that were with me left and went way down to the other end of the beach without telling me, or they may have told me and I completely blocked them out (I was blessed with the man gene that allows them to block out women when they are talking except in reverse, I have a bad habit of blocking out men and women and pretty much anyone that is talking to me especially when I get distracted by anything that moves or is sparkly. (Or it could be because I'm a really fast listener or be because I have the attention span of a grape). 

Totally me

I have a few rules in my "Denise rule book" I don't go into the ocean because I can't swim, well I can swim a tiny little bit, almost. I'm not scared of the water, I'm mostly scared of drowning in it or being eaten by something in it. I also don't usually turn my back to the ocean while I'm shell or sharks tooth hunting because I'm scared something will sneak up and grab me and drag me off to eat me, or because I've seen way too many scary movies, whichever. These are real fears of mine and I don't do swimming pools unless I can touch bottom. Well guess what, I totally swam in the ocean, well I snorkeled and swam, only had 15-20 mini panic attacks. I worked through it and swam! Better yet I found treasure! Sort of. I went snorkeling for sand dollars and I hit big time, it was awesome. I had an odd little fish stalk me for over an hour, it would just swim around me and check me out which made me nervous as all heck because I had the feeling he was all like 'here she is sharky... come get her'. Then I started to worry because I was pretty sure I was gonna get stabbed in the heart by a sting ray and they were basically laying on the floor of the ocean like IED's waiting for me to pass over them when I was snorkeling.

Notice the barb halfway up his tail, my brother caught this on his fishing line, I made/begged him to free it and he'll forever hold it against me :)

It didn't help that my brother caught a sting ray the day before (the one in the picture above is the one he caught and released) and you know that's  what killed Steve Irwin. I'm an ocean accident waiting to happen. So after the whole sea monster shadowy thing I'm like damn it! I should have a glass of wine, but at that point I'm so paranoid and freaked out about something that may or may not try to get me that I'm too scared to go up to the condo to get a glass. This is exactly why I should have a cabana boy.
So now that I have all that out of the way, my vacation was spectacular. I was on an island accessible only by boat for 7 days and nights, I was on the beach every night until 3-4am, I fished, I swam (for real! I totally swam, it was awesomely terrifying) I collected lots of shells, sand dollars and sharks teeth.

 I saw a manatee and 2 sea turtles that came up on the beach to lay eggs (which I stayed away from until after she laid her eggs and she was heading back to the water, then I took a few quick shots with my cell phone (no flash photography only a dimly lit head lamp because I didn't want to stress her out).

She was HUGE and absolutely gorgeous. 

umm what else? Oh I fed a great blue heron whom I named Uncle Melvin because he was all weird and shifty like I think an Uncle Melvin would be. 

Uncle Melvin (you have to admit, he looks a bit shifty)

I visited my mom (who lives like 30 minutes away from where I was) and I relaxed, I laid on the beach and got some sun and I had almost no cell phone coverage  at all. It was fabulous.

I thought these crabs were pretty

He was totally casing my shells or my shoe.

I've never seen a pompano (the fish picture below) before, so of course I had to play with it and torment my husband. (the fish was dead, which doesn't make playing with it any better but I think a live fish would have been freaked out being up that high. By the way, I don't like seafood so of course I didn't eat him. My husband, son and brother did though. Poor fishy.)

Hey uhhh buddy uhhh whatcha doing? 

My niece Taylor and I while visiting my momma, I look delirious, but I like this picture,  mostly because she looks like me and that pisses my sister off haha!  

Oh and the hat I'm wearing is hiding a big knot on my forehead, I walked into a large wooden beam and damn near knocked myself out before I went to my momma's house, maybe that's why I look delirious, it's just my concussion.  

Loading up

Ahhh finally I'm caught up once again. Here's a shot of my gorgeous helper taking packages from my studio to load in my truck.

Whoa... careful 

"Really? you are going to take pictures of this?"

This of course is my darling son Levi. He started working part time for me a few weeks ago so that I can get more done. He's also starting to learn how Etsy works, he's filling orders, loading and unloading my kiln and has even created a few "masterpieces" himself.  I'll share when we get back from vacation.
Ohhh YES! my vacation starts Saturday morning, should be fun. I'm heading down to Florida with 2 of my siblings to visit with our mom, do some kayaking, fossil hunting, shell collecting and all the other cool stuff I can cram into my week.

Shame on me!

It's been a month since I last blogged? Shame on me! Well I'm not sure where to begin so I'll just jump in.
I had to make a trip to Maryland, my dad was having a procedure done on his heart and I wanted to be there for it so off we went, even took Buddy with us because the poor guy has a little separation anxiety.

He's tethered in the backseat so he can only reach me when my seat is reclined and when it is, he comes for snuggles :o)   

It must be turtle time in Maryland, I promise you I'd be willing to bet that we saw 50 or more in one day and every time I saw one I'd holler "Turtle!" and my youngest brother Cody would jump out and catch it and we'd turn it back loose. Finally after maybe after I hollered "turtle" for the 20th time and stopped quickly (no... I didn't slam on my breaks, it was just a quick stop. Really.) he just looked at me and said "really?" and of course I replied "Yeah! Go get em!" I'm an awesome pain in the ass like that LOL

My strawberries have stopped putting out, I'm pretty sad about that, but my blueberries are putting out now so woohoo!

Oooo how about that! I swear I love being able to walk through my yard and catch a snack, hopefully my peach trees will hold on to some peaches this year, last year squirrels cleaned me out.

I'm working feverishly, I finally have travel mugs listed in my Etsy store again and lots of new dunk mugs. I just unloaded some sweet dishes from my kiln today, I'll share later, maybe tomorrow.

Fresh from the kiln

Some of the goodies I just unloaded from my kiln this past weekend. Everything was thrown by me on my wheel or made with slabs of clay. By far one of my most favorite kiln loads to date! 

Coffee mug or beer stein

coffee mug or beer stein 

Dragonfly dish

I love this color of green!

Cornbread baker

Birdhouse 

organic shaped dish, impressions made from items from my backyard

Hand built from a slab of clay

close up of the stamped design. I carved the stamp myself

chips and dip! Ooo this makes me hungry :o) 

Just call me Lemony Snicket...

I certainly have had a series of unfortunate events this year. Hopefully I'm straight now and I can get on with work at a steady pace. My kiln fired today as a matter of fact, I almost forgot how to turn it on, not really but you know what I mean.
After I loaded my kiln this morning and got it going, I pulled out some things that I made a while back and waxed the bottoms of them, I'll glaze those tonight so I can fire again tomorrow, that's right! 2 days in a row of firings, I'm on a roll.

Waxed

What's up at home? Well... I have yet again another new mouth to feed. Remember a few months ago I adopted this little maniac.

Jackson, finally leash trained and loves to go for walks.

He suffered from parvo and I think he was dropped on his head as a baby or was at least raised by Gollum from the lord of the rings. You know... Gollum, this guy.

They kinda look alike, right? Jackson covets a ball, not a ring but yeah, I see the resemblance. He's actually doing very well and has a new best friend Atticus, the bulldog pup that lives across the street comes over regularly for play dates.

Atticus and Jackson

Well more dog news, I know you didn't come here to read a bunch of dog stuff but, it's all I've got LOL
Some folks we know picked up a dog 3 months ago that had been left to live on his own on the street after his owner passed away. He lived on his own for 6 months until these folks found him and went door knocking in his neighborhood and that's how they learned of his history. Well they kept him for 3 months and were no longer able to keep him so... guess who has yet another new dog? Yep, me. He has some issues, but don't we all? Here he is when he first came home with me.

my son Michael and Buddy

I've always been a sucker for a Benji face, this is "Buddy". I took him to the groomers and got him all dolled up and here he is all spit shined. Size wise, he is about the same size as Jackson height wise he might have an inch on him and maybe 3-5 pounds.

Buddy

He and Jackson quickly became friends and he makes for a great baby sitter for Jackson. They play all day and night, it's pretty cute. He's a Yorkie mix, I'm thinking Yorkie-poo (yorkie poodle mix). He absolutely loves everyone and wants desperately to be in your lap and loves to go for rides in my truck. What he doesn't love is my cats... we're working on that. I've tackled that issue in the past, I have a pretty good method of introducing dogs and cats, especially dogs with a high prey drive. So far I have gotten him to stop the chasing and lunging at them. So that is some real progress.
Well that's my update. I'm working and getting back on track, thanks for staying tuned :o)

My new ride

My sweet husband bought me a truck! I'm thrilled, I've wanted a truck for a couple of years. It's a Toyota Tundra, 4 wheel drive automatic I'm pretty sure they made this truck special for me :o) I did have to promise that I would let him drive it occasionally, that's fair enough. Right?  Now I have plenty of room to tote my stuff, I could even get more stuff or bigger stuff.

I could really redneck it up and paint a big #3 on the door hahaha! ok no... I'm not going to do that. Probably not. But I am thinking Hello Kitty floor mats or pink fuzzy dice may be in order. Maybe.

Bowls

I spent the day working on making bowls. I'm doing more of my soup bowls with a cracker pocket like these...

The pocket is very handy, especially if you like sitting in front of the TV snuggled up eating chili, beef stew or soup (or ice cream! don't forget the ice cream!) while watching a movie. I don't like to put all of my crackers in my soup at once, they get all soggy and I hate that.

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I made a template for a new bowl a few weeks ago and today I was finally able to use it and I made some slab/ hand built bowls and decorated them with one of the stamps I carved a few weeks ago.

I still have to clean up the rim, but overall, I'm pretty happy with these. Maybe I'll make some plates to match. I really enjoy hand building, if you are unfamiliar with that term it basically means you roll out a slab of clay and build with it. It's one of my favorite things :)

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If you've kept up with my blog then you know I got a new puppy several weeks ago that I adopted from my local humane society. To update you on the terrorist  little darling...

Cheese! Yes the fool dog smiles

Jackson has overcome his fight with parvo and is a healthy boy. In the past 24 hours he has killed 2 new kong dog toys (they lasted less than an hour), he chewed the insulation off the pipes of the heating and air unit, chewed up a bottle of cuticle/nail oil, 12 (yes twelve) plastic glaze test containers and the lids, 1 aluminum can and ate a wad of clay. I spend most of my time saying no and drop it. I refer to him as "The Infidel".