It's been a while

Well I've moved to the city and had to give away my chickens. On a positive note, our neighborhood has a ton of friendly ducks and several lakes.  We decided to spawn and thought living in town would be easier with a baby. Having a Walgreens and a daycare in the neighborhood has made things easier, that's for sure!
This summer I'm teaching a class online and taking a darkroom photography refresher. Just trying to ease my way back in to my craftiness now that the baby is over a year old.

Wet Plate Collodion

My neighbor girl is kind enough to act as my model as I learn how to make wet plate collodion images.  Although out of focus and full of little issues, I love this image of my neighbor and her best buddy.  It captures some of the fun of girlhood and the little line that showed up connecting their eyes just adds to the fun.

After too many chickenless years, I've finally got some more chickens! This is a picture of Izzie the Frizzle pullet. She's either about to die or really sleepy right now. I'm hoping the latter because she is insanely adorable. I'll keep you posted. Also got 3 chicks, hopefully two silkies, at the same time...They seem to be doing better than Izzie at the moment. I've also ordered a coop for them once they are big enough to enjoy it. The nice gentleman at Atexashenhouse.com is also making me an extended run to add on to the coop. Here's a link to the pic: http://atexashenhouse.com/our-products/a-modern-wedge-chicken-coop/#all

Summertime! Well...Almost!

Thank you to MSC for the Las Vegas vacation!
A few more days left in the school year; summer
is almost here!
Still waiting to hear back on most of the vacation plans, but planning on debate camp for two weeks in June and doing the summer workshop for the team in August.
I'm hoping to go to Montana for a photography workshop in July, but not sure yeat if the class will make.
More updates as the summer progresses!

Time for the Bi-Yearly Post

The debate season has been keeping me more busy than usual this year. I will definitely be taking the kids to fewer tournaments next year! Well, I've been busy but not so busy that I couldn't find time to whip together some truly awesome bread pudding. The recipe is below, but here's the important part: Drizzle a few drops of heated apricot jam on top after it is cooked and serve with a tablespoon of lowfat honey greek yogurt as a 'sauce'. Yummy!!

Combine the following and cook at 350 in a lightly buttered pan for 25-35 minutes, or until done:

-2 Cups of milk (non fat works well)

-2-3 Eggs

-1 Cup of Sugar

-1-2 Tablespoons of vanilla

-1 Tablespoon of cinnamon

- A sprinkle (1/4 t) of any or all of the following: nutmeg, cloves, ginger powder

-1 smallish apple (granny smith, makintosh, something that will bake well)- slice up super thin in small squares. Thin!

Mix all the above, add bread (see below), toss in buttered or oiled baking dish, and bake!

1 loaf of bread, about the size of a french bread loaf rather than a whole package of sandwhich bread. I mix french bread and wheat sandwhich bread. Use whatever is handy. If it isn't stale, toast it pretty well before tearing in to chunks. Add the chunks at the end, after the other ingredients have been mixed together in a bowl.

What is this? another post? why,yes it is...

Hmmm...Here I am, posting for the third time in a single month! Its the little accomplishments in life that do one proud.

Well, I had a FABULOUS day today on my staycation. I had a great facial, a pedicure with parafin (yum), and to top it off, I found a new craft store! Yea! I signed up for quilting lessons! Yea!!

After rereading my posts (I know, it doesn't take long), I'm starting to see a trend with constantly adding new hobbies. Oh well, that's what I spend my big bucks on I guess.

Had a great lunch with Kathy on Tuesday; looking forward to her birthday party.

Not a whole lot going on around here so I'm about to go visit the Fam. I'm so bored that I've resorted to cleaning the house. Ugh! Save me from the Pergatory of housecleaning. I've already got the dining, living, and bathrooms taken care of, with the office on the agenda for tomorrow. I need a good seamstress or alterations place that isn't exorbitant...

Not much crafting going on but perhaps I'll get on that tomorrow after cleaning the office.

Midsummer Update

After a week at NFL Nationals (Megan Fountain placed 4th in Storytelling- yea!) and three weeks at debate camp, I'm glad to finally be back home. I'm still a bit brainfried and physically exhausted by the hours kept at camp, but after a day or two of vegging out and catching up on Trueblood episodes, I'm almost back to normal. I still have a ton of ideas and lesson plans to sort through from my little stay at camp. While I was away, the Hubbster's watering regime yielded these awesome tomato plants

My pitcher also survived with no cracking, probably due to me not fooling with it since I was out of town. Another month or two and I'll have the money for the ac/heater for the garage. In the meantime, I've had the lame-o excuse of being out of town to explain my lack of potting. I just went out to add a photo of the pitcher and I've realized the handle looks rediculous...I've also discovered some kind of bug that has decided my greenware makes for a nice home. All of this is a sign that I need to throw and fire more than once every 6 months. How humiliating. Well, in this heat, it will just have to wait.

On a more positive note, I had great success with my attempts at developing my pinhole camera film (4x5) and making some argyrotype prints. That, at least, I can do in airconditioning.

More posts soon with photos from my trip to Phily last Spring. Better late than never, eh?

It's been awhile...

Ok, why have a blog if you don't post on it? Here's one more attempt to get it going again...

So my little debaters did really well this year. Yea! Two of my little CX pairs went to state- yea! I won't bore you with more details on their manifold accomplishments.

With our good results this year, I've been motivated to go to "Debate Camp" this summer. Being rediculous and doing nothing normally, I'm going to stay for the extended month-long session rather than the typical two-week deal. Or at least that's the plan.

Blogging isn't the only thing I've neglected. I haven't been throwing pots since late October. I started throwing again a couple of weeks ago, now that the debate season is over. I think I really need to invest in an airconditioner for my garage/studio. Made a nice pitcher with several darted areas. I'm hoping it turns out well and keeps me motivated. The handle could still pop off or crack and then I'd be totally bummed.

My argyrotype chemicals and 4x5 film arrived last night. I'm pretty excited to give it all a try. The photography teacher let me borrow the darkroom this morning to load some film, so I'll try some pinhole exposures tonight. Still waiting on a drum agitator to arrive to process the film without having to shake it by hand the whole time.

I'll post some photos of the pitcher if it makes it to bone dry with no major issues.

Post-Ike Update

Did I mention that I don't update this blog very often?  Well, I suppose a hurricane is good incentive to blog.  Fortunately, our house was not damaged.  There is a lot of clean-up and we were without power for about 5 days, but we had no problems compared to people just a few miles East of us.

On the Horizon:

First weekend in October I will be attending a workshop at Mudfire in Atlanta.  Annette Gates makes beautiful hand-built porcelain!

http://www.mudfire.com/annette-gates-workshop-20081004.htm

My Speech and Debate team will be attending their first tournament the second weekend of October.  We were scheduled to compete at a couple of tournaments in September, but Ike pretty much unscheduled for us.  My new students are so cute! When they don't tick me off...  I was fortunate enough to inherit a number of talented, hard-working performers.  In the past few weeks, several very promising newbies have also emerged.  Mainly, I am just impressed by the work ethic and great attitudes of the team members.  I am really blessed to be in a position to work with these great people!

Enough gushing, already!  Well, I'm really enjoying my new school district as well as the students, so I'm afraid there's nothing to be snarky about.  

On a down-note, I did not have very good sales at the Yale Street Art Market in September.  Apparently it wasn't just me having a bad night, so maybe it was something to do with it being a night-show or just a bad alignment of the stars.  Who knows?  I thought Mitch did a great job running the market and promoting it.  I definitely need to work on my displays for the pottery, but my new scarf display rack worked very well.  In the meantime,  I'm a little depressed about the pot-making so I'm going on a potting-holiday for a few weeks.  

I suppose you can't keep a Craft Queen down too long though, because in the absence of pots I've started sewing a bit.  I made my step-mother a very nice throw pillow last night after running across a printed fabric I knew she would love.  I'm going to try my hand with some applique this afternoon after I finish putting my grades in.

TTFN 

I got a new teaching job! Yea!! I'm going to be a speech and debate coach! Yea!

Ok, Geek Confessional time:

I've been so excited about the new job that I've only been able to sleep for a few hours the past two nights. Maggie has been my 1-3am companion, providing moral support while Russ has done his best to sleep through the computer noises emitting from the office (poor hubby!). At least I have put the time to good use: I've begun working on the cx topic for the year and working out some lectures for the debate classes.

Zeitgeist

How cool is the flickr zeitgeist thingy (see below)?
I mean who, outside of socialists, communists, and Hegelians, just throws around the term 'zeitgeist'? And its actually used well in this context!

I have a new favorite pottery website. This woman is a genius, and I don't use that term lightly. You should see her art fair booth set-ups on flickr; they're awesome!!
http://www.tashamckelvey.com/

RIP Tim Russert. He was a great journalist and an even better human being.

Creating the CraftCave

I've spent the week stocking my summer Craftcave, aka the spare bedroom. Pretty much blew most of my summer crafty budget the first two weeks...No sweat.
New discoveries this week:
wwoofing
kiki smith
the peace of a clean living room

next week:
wednesday i'll visit the blue heron farm to learn about goat cheese. yuum!