Part 2 Moving On...

It was horrible losing Howard.  I didn't really want to be home but at the studio it was hard looking at his bead and his toys and his treats - that was hard too.  I cried and cried over him.  Great Dane puppies are very hard to find so I went on line looking to see if any breeders in a 100 mile radius had any litters planned and was lucky enough to find 3 with litters that were all 6 weeks old.  We picked one that was about an hour and a half from our home and went to visit him.  Two weeks later we brought home the puppy.

We named him Wilson.  He was so tiny...

  

for about a minute.  8 weeks old he was 19 pounds...12 weeks old he was 37 pounds!

And do you remember when Howard had his test on his nose and Stella our lab/golden mix also had surgery? Well, her's came back as a really bad, aggressive cancer.

Unfortunately, she took a sudden turn and she passed a few weeks ago. too.  It's been a very hard year for our family.  Stella's brother (litter mate) Stanley has bonded well with Wilson, but Stanley is 10 and a little too old for all this giant puppy energy.

I'm afraid Wilson is going to hurt him.  We are also worried that Stanley won't be here much longer.  So I talked to the vet and they agreed that if we intend to have a second Great Dane we should get it now so that Wilson will leave Stanley out of the crazy play and we won't have the dominance issues later.  If we wait till Wilson is a year (as planned) and then introduce another great dane we could have a little trouble with alpha male battles.  So we decided to bring home another baby.  We just happened to hear about a litter of puppies that are 7 weeks old and about 10 minutes from our house.  So last week we went to see them and couldn't resist this face!

 We will be naming him Truman and are expecting his arrival at our home on Wednesday (November 27 - just 2 more days!!!!) so he can celebrate Thanksgiving with us! yay, two crazy puppies and 11 guests here on Thursday - it's going to be greaaaaaat! lol

Everyone is like "oh you have a presidents thing going huh?" ah no.  We chose the names based on idiots - Wilson the volley ball from the movie Cast Away and Truman from the movie The Truman Show.  We just aren't that deep around here - pure coincidence that there have been presidents with the same names.

And remember how excited I was to move into the studio in the historic house in Bel Air that was built in the 1800's....

Welllll, as much as I loved my studio the kids schedules and the puppy have made it impossible to have a studio away from home.  So for the past two weeks I have been moving my studio back home and have created a huge mess! 

 I have been able to make an area for glazing...

 and a spot for my little kiln...

 I'm still working on my space for working with clay...

 and I've set up some shelves for the boxes of clay and for the trays of finished pieces...

 But the area for the girls....Big work in progress!  We've made a little cubical with two desks and my two huge metal shelving units from the studio. One has my glazes and the other is for the girls scrap book paper, beads, paints, etc.  One desk will be for them to glue and paint and create on and the other is for making jewelry and I'll be using it to pack orders (once they get all of their stuff organized and put away)

 Kellie already loves the space - she spent the entire weekend working in her smash journals!

I do have some new pieces in the works.

I've been making tiles to hang on the wall.  I started with a series of flowers... 

and then I made a bunch in pendant size...

 Then birds...

 and other things...

I haven't been able to use my kiln until this past weekend.  This tile had a crack in it but was still intact so I decided to glaze it as a test... 

 I'll be glazing the rest of the pieces very soon.

(unpacking and organizing the studio as well as getting ready for company on Thanksgiving will come first)

I also made a bunch of new stamps for clay.

I can't wait to play with all the new patterns! 

 So that's it.  I'm up to date here and my goal is to be a better blogger now that I'm home 24/7.  Be ready for  new work and some crazy puppy adventures coming soon!