Fixing I'm tired,but I'm up and heading to the Plaza art fair

 What can I say?  I am no good at this blog thing.  I knew I hadn't  kept at it often enough, or even been very interesting.
 I didn't know I wasn't even really blogging. I was journaling on a private website.  That is what I will call it, finding out months later that you never published 4 posting on you blog.

Private Website Journaling: Where even less people can read your Blogs with  0 subscribers!

The last few stories are oddly out of order as I just realized I had never click Publish and they were still in Draft.  So I  posted them in the time I had set aside to blog today. . . . I know, how will you live 6 months again for me to remember to do this?!?

Fear NOT! And enjoy my lame teasers:

• I have purchased my own pottery wheel. The first and most important cornerstone of my own home studio! Will get  its  own story with pictures and all soon.
• I am headed to the Plaza Art Fair at the Country Club Plaza tonight , for an evening of  fun and inspiration.

Just wait though, I get less computer illiterate everyday, and I am damn funny.  You'll see!

Public Service Announcement-Publishing on posts, I missed.

Drugs are Bad. Mmmm, K?!? -Mr.Mackey

They are. I may sound like a prude but they're bad.
People do stupid, wrong, and dangerous thing when they're on drugs. They hurt themselves, and others. They make bad choices on drugs.

As a kid I didn't get why a person would ever try drugs. What could be so good that you would break the law or but risk you health or life. I still don't know why people do what they do.

I was born in the early 70's so we got a lot of antidrugs information in school. I had teen relative tell me horror stories of classmates or of their own. Deaths, frightening halucinations. I was truely scared of the effects illegal drugs could have on my brain and physical health. I still am. I am heartbroken  about  drugs influence on the lives of people I have know and some, I love.

Say, NO to Drugs, their bad!

It's simple, it's funny, it's true! Mmmm, K?!?

It's spring already, isn't it?- Posting stories I forgot to click Publish on. I'll get this someday!

I am pretty sure my Hostas have unfuraled. My Surprise Lilys' leaves have been up for a few weeks. Robins are everywhere! It seems like the last of winter has held onto KC with a vice grip this year. Sure, we were teased a little a few times in the last few weeks with a few warm days, only making it worse. Where is the sun? Where is my springs?

I am not, typically, a person who needs the sunny, dry days. I loved carrying mail in the rain. It had to be pretty cold and windy for it to bother me. I rarely wore raingear, and then only to keep the mail dry. I will gladly play in the rain with my children, but this isn't a cool rainy day. It is dreary overcasts with a deep chill in the year, that is keeping me indoors. Is it my age? My health? I just don't want to go out even to my car. I might have become a hermit already if it wasn't for my clients and children.

I haven't been throwing this week and that always brings me down a bit. I get used to the tranquility that comes with it, and when I don't have time to get to the studio, everything else bothers me a bit more. But really, this is what I have.

I'm just saying, "Enough, already!".

Snowed in- Posting stories I forgot to click publish.

I guess they are calling this The Blizzard of 2011. I think I will call it Mom Prison '11, and it started right after Christmas break. The kids went to school for maybe 3 days and then Jack Frost really went to town. I have never seen this much snow, anywhere I have lived, in my whole life.

Don't get me wrong I love when I get more time with the boys, but they are getting so bored, and the cabin fever has sent in for everyone already. We've been sledding, watched movies, my oldest boy has shoveled yards. We have played uno and monopoly, crafted, and painted. And now they are getting their summer's wrecked from the weather.

To top it all off, my husband is hurt and off work, and stuck home with us . That's always fun!

Moving Right Along - Posting stories I forgot to click publish on. Someday I'll get this down.

After you find out what your really good at, you need to do it. That's not just a suggestion, it's my personal truth. You spend your days coming up with new ideas and things you want to try. It's like a creativity volcano building up pressure inside you. You have to let that tension out. Everything else you do frustrates you, because you want to doing what you love.

I really haven't been out to the studio enough lately, and I am feeling it again. All that anxiety that throwing pottery helped clear out, is now mounting slowing back up. The plan of going out more this month didn't not work out at all. In fact I went out far less.

Aren't Summers supposed to be relaxing with more free time. No school or after school activities. When did all that start spilling over into the summer? This weekend I have 4 animal clients (I am a pet sitter), baseball game, a trip to the water park for the boys, and 3 days of 4-H County fair activities. I am putting a stop to this madness now. I need to throw and create!!

And here is my plan:

• 3 weekdays we will be doing creative and learning fun at the Rea-Keeton house all day. This point in in affect starting now and every other week this summer. The other 2 will be spent at Worlds of Fun and Oceans of fun...got get out some, right!
• We will be encouraging dad to go fishing and play pool with his friends. So he will let us do what ever we wont in the kitchen and garage!
• I am promising myself to get to the studio twice this week for at least 2 hours each time.
• I am organizing the most kick butt CraftSwap! Getting my girlfriends together and having a blast sharing tools, supplies, ideas, and wine! And margarita's.
• Home organization. So it is easier to pull out supplies and be neat while we create out masterpieces.

This is the plan. Wish me luck!

Happy places

I've spent a lot of my life searching for what I think is going to make me happy, be my 'happy place'. Always daydreaming of things I want to try or could see myself doing. I think I found it.

For most my life, sketching and painting have been my passion. I have so much in my head, fighting with my hands to get out. As much as I loved painting, color and to put the pictures I imagine down on paper or canvas, it has never been my 'happy place'. Such is the reason for the struggle between my head and my hands. Any drawing or paintings I have done have always caused me anxiety. How weird to love something so much and be caused so much stress by it. I don't technically have to paint, and in all the rest of my life, I am the furthest thing from a perfectionist. To make matters worse it had gotten worse as I got older. I had to make myself draw or paint to ease my need to create but it had become a chore to get started.

Almost a year ago I decided to try my hands at wheel thrown pottery. I remembered loving it as a kid, 10-11 yr old I think, but hadn't done anything in more then 25 years. I had to start out in class of experienced potters learning new techniques because it was the only time I could get there. I was so nervous, and thought this could be just like painting but more frustrating as my work literally falls apart in my hands. I was waiting to hate everything I did.

That was so far from what happened. Long story, Short:

Not only was I able to keep up, I was doing so well, others in the class were teasing me, that I must be taking a couple night class. By the end of the first semester, my instructor was suggesting I start applying for shows, and suggesting I should stop giving all my work away and start selling pieces. While that made me beam with pride inside, my self-doubt made me hold out another 6months before I decided to sell anything. In the last few weeks I have slowly eased myself into setting up a Etsy.com shop, and on Saturday evening had my first online sale. Yay, me!

I feel like working with clay has set my creativity free. I love my pottery. Sometimes glazes don't turn out like you thought. It doesn't stress me out. I love it. It's like Christmas when ever something comes out of the kiln. I know pretty much what it will be like but I take a lot of chances, and the variations thrill me. I have never thrown away a bowl or sculpture. I haven't hidden any thing I've thrown from my friends and family out of frustration.

When I am throwing, trimming, waxing, or glazing I am in the zone. No headaches, no joint pain, occasionally my allergies do interfer, but I get lost in the shape of the clay and the color of the glaze. I have to set an alarm on my phone so I get out of the studio in time to beat my youngest's bus home in the afternoon. I seen most faults as aspects of character or a reason to make and altered sculpture.

I love it. I love to share it. It gives me peace. I have found my happy place.

Aine and Aiden Pottery * is also on Facebook. You can link to the shop by clicking on its name or the Facebook page Here.

* I'll explain the name soon!