Merry Christmas

So this year Kyle and I had our first Christmas alone together. It was fun making the Christmas dinner and getting to open our presents together. We did miss our families though, but at least we were able to go home and see them for a few days before Christmas. I was supposed to work on Christmas Day so we came home Christmas Eve and had our Christmas dinner then.

This is a picture of our wonderful Christmas Eve dinner. It wasn't much, but it sure was tasty. Everything turned out wonderful, which was a relief since I had never cooked Christmas dinner by myself before.

Kyle was a huge help with Christmas dinner, even though I noticed that he didn't wait until desert to try our pumpkin pie.

Kyle carving the Christmas Ham.

This was our small Christmas tree. The cat's were pretty good about leaving it alone although they did knock it over once while we were in Walla Walla and they do like to eat our bird decorations. They just love the tail feathers.

So Christmas morning finally arrived, well actually we got up and opened presents at 5:00am when the hospital called and woke us up to say that I could be on-call and could spend Christmas at home. So we got up and opened our presents, and the cats opened theirs.

This toy is called a Cat Teaser and it works great for teasing them. We did end up having to take it away though because Kabob likes to carry it in his mouth and hide and growl to keep anyone from taking it away from him. Maybe we teased him too much and now he is afraid that we will take it away...which we did.

The cats really enjoyed all of the catnip in the toys too. This is Kabob after he has had a little too much catnip.

Here he is passed out after a lot too much catnip. Notice that he is passed out on a catnip toy pillow.

So then Kyle and I open all of our presents. Kyle liked his boat and really wanted to go play in the snow with it but I was a little too cold and a little too tired at 5am so he just played with it in the house.

Merry Christmas!

ceramics update

Here is a preview of my final capstone project for ceramics. I'm going to make a vase out of different colors of clay in a process called neriage. Here is a chili pepper I made from a mold using the two clays.

When throwing with this clay it leaves a cool pattern on the wheel when you cut it off of the wheel.

I had to make the vase in two parts because I suck and can't throw tall things. the bottom is in the close one and the top is in the background. It should be about 11.5 in. tall when its done.

here is the vase before it has been bisqued. the swirly design is some more neriage. its made by rolling strips of clay into a log to form the pattern you want and then cutting it really thin. So what you see is the cross-section of the log I made. When it has been bisqued I will put a clear glaze on it and then fire it for the final time.