Ceramic magic

A few Saturdays ago, I met a group of women at a paint-your-own-pottery shop in Germantown, Paint A Piece. 

I've visited shops like this, mostly in SeaSide. You pick your ceramic piece and paint it. Pretty simple. The nice thing is that the shop has all the paints, and they fire the pieces in the kiln for you. 

Last year in SeaSide, I wanted to make a ring holder, but they didn't have the piece. I don't know if you think about a ring holder a lot, but I do. I always think how I would use one by my sink so that I could put my ring and small jewelry on it while I'm washing my hands/face/etc.

Paint A Piece did have a ring holder, so I was all over it!

I decided to try one of their pottery glazes. It paints on a totally different color than it fires in the kiln. The nice thing is that they have some built-in textures and colors. I chose the glaze called Robin's Egg. We have brown and blues in our master bedroom, and I thought the ring holder would fit in well in our bathroom...next to my sink. 

This is what it looked like when I finished it at the shop:

Questionable I know. The white inner ring you see if a white treatment that I was told could lighten the area you put it on but the other glaze color would remain. 

My ring holder was ready in just a few days, and it looked like this! 

Can you believe it? I'm really happy with it, and I find the pottery glaze amazing. How did it transform so completely? You can see the lighten inner ring too, which I'm really happy with. 

I also did the bottom because you have to cover the entire piece with the glaze, and I added an A initial with the year. 

I had a fun time at the shop, and I'm really happy with the results. I could see doing this again!

2,8,14

These are the ages that Everett will be at the beach this year. 

We took him to Seaside in December when he was just two months old. 

We recently got back from a beach trip with friends and he was eight months old. 

And, we'll be going back to Seaside this December when he will be 14 months old. 

I thought it would be fun to take some of the same photos on each trip. 

Here E is back in December. These were taken at the end of our photo shoot, and he was DONE. They were also hastily shot because we all knew it would fall out any minutel

Here he is in the same spot just a few weeks ago. 

These next few, I'm going to replicate when we are back in December.

Here's Chris and E in front of the house we are staying in this coming December.

A daddy son moment beachside. 

And me and E!

I can't wait to redo all of these in just a few short months!

Beach time!

We are so lucky that each year we travel to SeaSide, FL,  the week after Christmas with my family. It's so needed after the holiday rush. We usually take more beach photos, but the weather was a pretty darn cold. We got one good beach day, so here are a few shots.

We are always good at the self portrait. It's kind of our thing.

Katie and me at sunset.

This is my cold smile, but we look cute!

This is the best one of us, and I love the sky and color!

The fam.