Footprints, Handprints and Turkey Plates

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I both had a combined birthday party. All of our girlfriends came over and we painted pottery. It was tons of fun and so neat that this company came to our house with the pottery and all the supplies. Then they took everything home, fired it and had it ready in just a couple of days!!

Actually, the company is owned by the nurse midwife that followed my pregnancy with Emily. She didn't get to deliver Emily since Emily was a c-section baby, but she stood right there in the operating room with me while Emily was delivered. She was quite honestly a godsend because I was a nervous wreck about moving to Texas and having a new doctor after losing baby Kyle in my last pregnancy. In our first meeting, I sat in her office crying my eyes out, and she sat right there with me handing me tissues and just listening. God definitely sent me an angel when he led me to her office.

Well, anyway - she moved to a new practice after Emily was born, so when I needed to go for my next check-up, I had to Google her and found both her new practice and her pottery business. So anyway, I guess that is the long way around telling you about Jeanean and Firehouse Pottery. She and her husband run the business out of their home, so I decided to take the kids and make two big turkey platters, one with a Christmas theme and one with a Thanksgiving theme.

We went over to Jeanean's on Thursday this week and commenced the projects. Both platters use the kids handprints and/or footprints to make the design. The turkey on the Thanksgiving plate is made up of Caleb's foot and Emily's hand. The Christmas plate is going to be two Christmas trees, each made of footprints - one of Caleb and one of Emily. We went ahead and did the printing on the Christmas plate, but I will have to go back and finish that one soon as the Thanksgiving plate took a couple of hours to paint.

The kids did great doing their prints. Caleb went first and Emily was very impatient - jumping up and down the whole time and telling us "it's my turn, it's my turn". Here they are getting printed.

Caleb had his footprint for the body of the turkey in brown and then the green footprint for the Christmas tree. Emily went next with her hand for part of the turkey feathers in red and then the other Christmas tree with her foot in green.

My husband was sweet enough to take Emily after the printing and go home, leaving Caleb and I there to paint. Any of you with a toddler would know that having an almost two year old running around in a room full of breakable pottery would be a recipe for disaster.

Caleb chose to paint a VW Beetle while I worked on my plate. We had a great time and we can't wait to go back and pick up our finished projects once they are fired. All in all, a successful mother son outing. Here we are with our finished projects. Just keep in mind that the colors will look very different (and better) after firing. I will post photos of the finished products once we pick them up.

Well, I am off to pack for my road trip with the girls to Houston to see Madonna in concert...I'm sure I'll have a post for that early next week. Until then....