Date Night

A month or so ago, my husband and I decided that we needed a "date night". Now, before you ask, no we don't have kids and we haven't been married for that long either. But that doesn't mean we don't get stuck in the rut of eating dinner in front of the TV - each of us on our own computers and thus barely speaking - most nights. So, in an effort to combat that, I called date night. We went to the 2nd street area of Long Beach to a place called Color Me Mine. If you've never heard of them, it's one of these places where you can make a ceramic piece - you choose a pre-created unfinished ceramic piece of varying size, complexity & price and "paint" it with the special glazes they have. You leave it there and they fire it for you, turning your hard work into a one-of-a-kind piece. It's something I've been wanting to try out for a while. Here's what we picked :

I have to tell you now, I have a bit of an obsession with all kinds of semi-tacky lawn ornaments - especially pink flamingos & garden gnomes. I find them fascinating, especially the older looking ones. I have a gnome that used to belong to my grandfather, and he has a prominent place right above our TV (we live in an apartment with a shared backyard and I would fear for his safety out there). I think he started the fascination with gnomes, but I've loved all things lawn-ornament-y for a while. (I also like to make up words. I can't help it.) Suffice it to say, I loved the movie Gnomeo & Juliet. Anyway, back to my date night story... I turns out that we are really slow painters! These little guys took us 2 visits of about 2 hours each time to finish. The really nice woman who was working the first night said to us as we got started "now, you know we close at 10 right?" and we just scoffed - 2 hours will be plenty of time to finish this paint job! No way!!! Neither one of us got more than half way done the first night.

Well, one of us got a little more than halfway done, but still... I'm happy to report they turned out beautifully! We both had a blast deciding on the colors, and sitting there painting surrounded by a bunch of other would-be-artists. (though there was a girl in there the first night who made this beautiful coffee mug - I think she may be a real artist!) I would love to go back, they had a bunch more things I wanted to paint - and even the hubby enjoyed himself! Here are the finished gnomes, after firing. Bet you can guess which one was mine!