Art Therapy

Monday night is quite possibly my favorite night of the week. My pots have gone from wobbly (well, some are still wobbly) to progressively symmetrical. These are last week's cups with new handles I made during class this evening.

After making handles and attempting a bowl -- now mashed up into clay for next week -- I threw one last cup before the class ended. And it might be my best one yet. My hands were too mucky with slip to take a photo, so hopefully next week I'll add a handle and show it off here.

Turn to Stone

Just in case you missed this on SYTYCD last week. AMAZING.

Table for Two

Husby and I had a date night at The Boathouse at Sunday Park a few Fridays ago. The weather was perfectly pleasant and we were surprised to find a live band playing by the water. Hot, hot days are worth it for these enjoyable evenings.

A Day to Celebrate

Happy Father's Day to the best dad a gal could ask for.

Some Catching Up to Do

It's been a while. I know.

It's just difficult to write at the end of a hard day when you just want to pour yourself a glass of wine and watch a Real Housewives reunion to zone out and recharge. And for some reason, lots of days have felt like hard days lately. I'm hoping that getting back into blogging will boost my spirits and keep you all updated on our RVA happenings.

So.

I got a Groupon back in the spring for a class at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. There are so many amazing classes to take -- letterpress printing, book binding, design programs, photography -- that I finally picked one the week before the first class and registered for an introductory ceramics class. I figured that it would have the most take-home projects and the most hands-on time out of all of them. And, since I took a class or two back in middle school, I figured it would come easily.

I learned after the first class that it is NOT easy. I also came to realize that my fellow classmates in Introduction to the Wheel had already been intimately introduced to the wheel and were throwing very nice pots before the syllabus was even passed around.
We're two weeks into the class now and my pots are still wobbly, but I'm really loving it. It's refreshing to be able to create a project with my hands after being cooped up in an office from 9-5. I also have a plan for all of my misfit creations: air plants. Air plants are supposedly easy plants to take care of and don't need any soil. The mugs and bowls that don't come out just right will be perfect little homes for my new black-thumb-turned-hopefully-green-thumb plant collection. My classmate (probably eyeing my third cattywampus attempt as we chat from opposite wheels) thinks it's a pretty brilliant idea too.

Tourists in Our Own Town

We kicked the weekend off with a Flying Squirrels game before some friends from college came to visit. We took them to Lamplighter and Ellwood's (hipster Richmond at its best, so reminiscent of Portland) and spent a cloudy but deceptively humid afternoon on Belle Isle. Chris and Stuart hopped rocks out to the middle of the rapids while Shiann and I snapped pictures.

Monday was so darn hot that we decided at 10am that we wouldn't leave the house or even get out of our pjs. A pork tenderloin in the slow cooker and corn on the cob were as close as we got to Memorial Day grilling. Perfect weekend.