Pottery 101

Developing my artistic side has always been an important endeavor to me.

Early on I dabbled in iron-on patches, felt bible figures, and the occasional paper doll. As my skills progressed I moved on to collages, mix tapes and photoshoots. By highschool I was writing music, painting (most anything in my room---sorry everything was purple and green for a while there, Mom!) and completed our (Becky and my) 2-year Hart Cousins' motion picture, which was a smashing success featuring such renown talent as, Amy Grant, Twila Paris, Lisa (local TV anchor) and Wor-D.

By the time I was in college my endeavors stretched to include, sculpture, painting, writing and musical performances (playing guitar for hall worship night counts as "musical performance", right?). Now that I have moved into the realm of "adulthood" I have seized opporitunities, however fleeting they may be to paint, write, decorate/arrange, sew and now....drum roll please.... pottery.

My friend Emily's sister in law Trish has begun teaching pottery classes at her studio. My friend Alysse and I have been to 1 class and 1 practice session so far and LOVE it.

In our first class we learned how to "wedge" which is the opposite of "kneading" so my extensive trainging in bread making did not really come in handy that much. Then we learned about "centering" which they say is the hardest part to learn.

(it also makes your hands look old and hairy---ok that's not really me)

Centering is the art of making sure your clay is in the very center of the wheel so that when you are working with it it doesn't become lopsided. This took a lot of practice but I got the hang of it pretty easily--i liken this to waterskiing, it is not something you can really explain, you just have to keep doing it until you feel how you are supposed hold it so that it does what you want.

(again with the hairy arms)

Then we practiced making a couple things. They were supposed to be low dishes, to set a candle on or such. My clay decided it wanted to be a small vase....oh well. Here are pics from the first day...

We loved it so much we went back out on Saturday and "practiced". I was pretty happy with my little vase, tea light holder and my plate until the plate went "whoop" to the side when i took it off the wheel. sigh.

Hopefully the picutres will become more and more impressive as we get better. We are going to work with sculpture soon too. SO very excited about that.

Wild Bear Siting

The Enlightenment of Punctuation

who knew punctuation could say so much about who you are....

take this test and learn more about the inner you. Enlighten yourself with a insightful glance into your soul. Dip into the depths below the surface and seek to find....ok enough of that.

Here's the test.

http://www.blogthings.com/whatpunctuationmarkareyouquiz/?newleftcolumn=yes&order=4

Here's my result.

--You Are a Comma --

You are open minded and extremely optimistic.

You enjoy almost all facets of life.

You can find the good in almost anything.

You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests.

You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time.

Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to.

(But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.)

You excel in: Inspiring people

You get along best with: The Question Mark

Apparently they left out:

You are incredbily prone to hurting yourself in stupid ways.

You are 97% more likely than the average person to find hair in your food.

You often find yourself yelling when something scares you, you almost fall/hurt yourself or just because you feel like it.

oh well, guess these things can only be so acurate. ;)

I hope Trev is a question mark then. :)

Tis the Season

...to start thinking about skiing. I found these pics while perusing my desktop folders at work. Some good old fashioned memories, fresh from a forgotten folder. Ah.

these are all from Big Mountain, which was 2 years ago i think.


We are headed to Idaho in a month for ski trip # 485872 with the Hart family. Thank you Dad for loving skiing!!


Here's a great pic of the fam (minus Dad) and our friends the snow monsters...






i love this shot of Mom and Dad...





this is the coolest picture of Rex...ever






i like the arrangement of people in this shot. especially Trev.





Well here's another shot i found...you know to even things out. This was taken at Trevor's family's hunting lease in Florida. Good times. Camo, guns, wild turkeys, ATV's ah the good life.



I should have called this post, Family Ties or something like that...hmmm.

Will you be my...

Here are some pictures that symbolize love, valentines, hearts, love, valentines, hearts...ok you get it.
Just consider this my very own Valentine gift to you.
Enjoy!
---Jenn, Trevor, Kyle this is dedicated to you.

--this is dedicated to Becky, Mom, Kaley and me--what i can't dedicate things to myself? Come on!

This is dedicated to Megan (who may never read this blog unless Becky tells her, "Hey Megan, Briana dedicated something to you on her blog. You might want to check it out. She didn't mention that today was your birthday, she might have forgotten. Oh well you should still check it out." Also dedicated to Katie, Becky and Mia.

this is dedicated to Trevor, Becky, my new friend Wilbert the Owl and Mom.

--------this is dedicated to Kaley and Becky.

this is dedicated to Rex and Siegfried and Roy.

Happy Valentines day! And to all of you who didn't get a picture dedicated to you, you should be happy that a weird picture didn't remind me of you. :)

and the weirdness continues...

Ok, so i was perusing on Heather an Rich's blog and found this picture of me and Trev... well as some of you blog followers might recall, we are in search of a decent picture of the 2 of us.




This is NOT it.


This is another example of our uncanny ability to take retarded pictures. (audible sigh). Anyway, here we are in all our glory.


Not much else new in the Taylor household. Just trying to keep the dogs from killing themselves, working, chilling with our homies---the usual. I have had an incredible amount of dreams about tornados recently, guess that's the only thing of note, probably not worth even mentioning although i know some of you like to stay up to date on my dreams. I know I do. and stuff. if you think about it.

Welcome, February.

credit for finding this picture: Kaley Hart
credit for drawing it: Jeotlyer Beuroernwo (that's what the signature looks like to me)

I dedicate this picture to: Feb-ru-ary.