Crackers were my best friend...

So I am not really sure why but it seems when you are sick crackers taste so dang good! Maybe its because my taste buds went all out of whack when I was sick and the salt on the crackers was the only think I could really distinguish? Anyways I got sick last wednesday and really didn't start feeling better until Monday. My great husband waited on me and made me meals and moved the humidifier from living room to bedroom at night. He also made sure I kept taking my medicine...I like to forget things like that. He really made my sick week much easier. I like being sick much better now that I am married than when I was single. So I am happy to be feeling much better now. I didn't see the sunlight for a week and it was very depressing! I am just happy it is sunny out now! So I missed a week of work, am back at work today, and tomorrow I we will be leaving for California! Yay! I have seriously worked 2 days in 2 weeks. Thats a little sad. But Chad and I are very happy to be going to Emily's (Chad's sister) wedding. We will be flying into Oakland tomorrow and coming back on Sunday. It will be a short but fun trip.

The finished products...

So I just love showing everyone who reads our blog my current pottery projects. My classes started out as just a class to fulfill a requirement but it has turned into a really great hobby that I hope to continue after I am done with school. Here are about half of the finished pieces. I will post the rest in a couple weeks.

Some of the pictures are a little bad. It was hard to get good pics of some of them. This one was smoked in a trash can after it came out of the kiln. This is what gives it the black color. The lighter part was done by painting a white slip on the pot before it went into the kiln to be fired. This one went to my mom as a gift.

Another view...

This is another smoked pot and it has carvings on the top.

This is one of my larger pieces. I really liked how it turned out. It is a little uneven on the sides but that is one of the qualities you get from handmade opposed to a wheel thrown pot. This piece has a crackle glaze on it. You dip it in the glaze before it goes in the kiln. Then when you take it out of the kiln you smoke it in a garbage can again. (You do this by putting shredded newspaper in the garbage and then put the pot directly in the garbage can when it comes out of the can. The process causes the glaze to crack. Then smoke from the garbage can fills in the cracks and they turn black. I really love this glaze.

A close up of the crackle glaze.

This one was taken out of the kiln and then a feather was pressed on with special pads and the feather was actually burned onto the pot. I gave this one to my little sister Ariana as a gift.

This one has horse hair and sugar on it. You also take this one out of the kiln and lay horse hair on it. The hair burns onto the pot and makes this neat pattern. The little black dots are sugar being thrown onto the pot. This one went to my older sister Nichole as a gift.

Another view...

Another horse hair. I love the red color with the horse hair.

Easter and Family time

This last week has been really fun because my mom and little sister Ariana have been here visiting. Here is a picture of Chad and Ariana outside our apartment. They were working on the Jeep....Chad's new favorite pastime.



We also had a wonderful Easter. We went to Orem to my Sister's brother-in-laws house. Sorry if that was confusing. Here is a picture of Chad and I. This is after we ate a wonderful Easter dinner.Brielle was very happy to say the least. She really liked being the center of attention. And it's hard not to love her because she is so cute!

I took this family picture of the cute little family. I actually got Brielle to smile!

We also got a family picture of us!

And all the girls in our family...


Brielle just loves grandma Budge. I thought this picture was just so adorable.

So Easter was a great time....It's always nice have family around us for the holidays.

Drive to the mountains

On the conference weekend Chad and I watched conference of course but we also took a drive up big cottonwood canyon(one of the cottonwood canyons, it might have been the small one). There are a few ski resorts up there and it was packed! There was also still a lot of snow. We took our Jeep for a drive with the top off and it was still a little chilly but it was a beautiful day. Anyways here are some pics from our drive.









It was such a beautiful day and I just love the snow...when it is in the mountains.

Flamehawk

We got this fish a while ago and I keep forgetting to post about it. It's called a flamhawk and it is a pretty interesting fish. He swims in a really weird way. Anyways Chad really likes him. We are sad that we will have to take down our tank in a few months. We are going to keep the tank and stand and the rock but will sell everything else so if anyone is interested in buying anything let us know!

A few more creations

These first three pots are the half and halfs that talked about in my earlier post. They are all painted with tara sidulada? I think that's how you spell it. Anyways...it is a colored slip, or a watered down colored clay.





This is a clay tile. It is the result of the ceramic mold I made of the original clay tile. I will make about 6 of these tiles and they all turn out exactly the same because I made a mold of the original tile. It turned out better than I thought it was going to.

Chad passed his EMT test!!!

We are so very very very excited!!! Especially Chad....and relieved and happy and did I say relieved. So Chad had two chances to take his final for his EMT class and he had to get at least a 75 to pass it. He didn't quite hit that score the first time, but he got a 77 the second time. I am so proud of him! He studied like a crazy man for the last week and it really paid off. So now he can take the state EMT test in a month because he passed his class final. He is so relieved and happy. Now he will need to take either the fire academy or some fire science classes and then he will be able to apply for a firefighting job! Yay! Well I guess that's all for now.