Bandana Bibs

How cute is this little nugget?

She's been drooling up a storm lately, so I sewed her some bandana bibs. It's nice to have an excuse to sew some quick things now. 

Introducing Mari Lee

 Wow, my last post was in January 2020. I'm not sure how things could have possibly changed more! We survived the last couple years and came out with a special prize. She's now a little over three months old and we are very happy. She's so sweet and happy.

Meet Mari Lee.

I should have been posting during the pandemic because I made loads of things! Pottery, baked goods, delicious meals and jewelry. We even closed in our garage and turned it into a room. That is probably worth a post.

More to come soon!

2019 Highlights

Happy New Year! I hope to be blogging more regularly here. 2019 was mostly a very good year and had a lot of family and travel highlights.

In March during my spring break, a group of close friends traveled together to Big Bend National Park. It was a magical week of hiking, group meals and goofs.

I won a teaching award in the School of Natural Sciences:

 In May we got to travel with family to the UK and had a wonderful time exploring coastal towns, visiting family, eating (fish & chips! meat pies!) and family runs:

Eric and I had a week to travel together post-family trip to visit a friend in Ghent and spend a few days in Paris:

At the end of June my family rented a beach house together in Florida. It was a really special week of seashell hunting, sand castles, pool time and a record amount of snacks (seriously! sadly don't have photo evidence):

and I continued making ceramics:

Clay Final Project

This past year I decided to take art classes for fun at the university I teach at. I'll admit I was a little naive with how time consuming it would be to be taking college level art classes, but I loved all the classes I took. Last spring I took a handbuilding clay class and a watercolor class. In the fall I took a wheel throwing class. I fell completely in love with clay and spent most of my free time in the studio. Our final project was to create a placesetting for at least four people with a minimum of 12 pieces. This was an incredibly challenging project for students new to throwing. Plates are a challenge to beginners as well as centering larger weights of clay.

I was completely humbled to be a student again. Having to adhere to all the same deadlines as the other students, I found some weeks nearly impossible to meet deadlines when life and work got busy. There were a couple nights I was in the clay studio late at night with a bunch of other students feeling that late night deadline crunch. (I can empathize so much more with my students now!)

More posts soon!

Kombucha

Hi, I'm alive! I disappeared when things got busy. I decided to take classes at the university I teach at (amazing opportunity to take classes for free!) and mistakenly took two classes in the spring semester. I took Clay I, a handbuilding class, and Watercolor I. I had so much fun, but I was in the clay studio all the time. I'll share some things I made soon.

I'm off this summer (YAY!). I spent almost four weeks in the UK at the beginning of the summer. Two & a half were spent as a faculty chaperone on a UK study abroad trip. The last week Eric flew over and we had a vacation in Ireland. Now I'm back working on house projects and such.

One of my first projects when I got back: brewing kombucha. I brewed kombucha once before, but it only turned out alright. I grew my own scobies recently and decided to give kombucha brewing one more shot. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad I did! This batch turned out fabulous. A great sweet/sour balance and I got bubbles! Woo! I added fresh strawberries when I bottled the batch and dropped in a raisin or two in each mason jar. The raisin is supposed to help with the carbonation. I followed the kombucha recipe here .

Homegrown scobies!

Making the starter tea

Now I'm on a cycle of continuous brewing, so we should have kombucha frequently! :-)

happy birthday eric!

Happy Birthday Eric! I made these chocolate chip cookie dough sandwiches. OMG. omg. Soft chocolate chip cookies with a cookie dough filling to go in the middle. I will be making these again.

Looking forward to celebrating Eric's birthday tonight at our favorite restaurant, Odd Duck. Also looking forward to this whole week because it's SPRING BREAK! Lots of watercolor and clay projects on the to-do list and a little free sxsw music stuff too. ;)