![]() Day 2: March 24th 2012 We started our morning in the cool brisk air of the Arizona desert. I cooked us some bagged omelettes and hot tea over our tiny camp stove while Jon tore down our campsite. Unfortunately, it was going to be a long day for us and we didn't get to check out the Homolivi Ruins near where we were camping. As soon as everything was packed up we hit the road again. Now remember that rattling noise I mentioned? It was getting worse while I was driving. Somewhere near Flagstaff, Arizona I pulled off the road at a tiny Shell gas station. Jon started checking all the lug nuts and sure enough the front tire had two loose ones. We asked a guy next to us if he had a tire wrench that might work so we wouldn't have to completely unload the car to get to ours. He did but of course it didn't fit, but he offered us to follow him to his junk yard that he owned down the road. So we did and to all of our surprise, the rattling noise we had been hearing was not a loose lug nut, but one that had completely broken off and was still riding in it's place! Jon and the AZ man went around and checked all of the tires and helped us get back on the road. The rest of the drive was pretty smooth for the day. We saw snow on the ground in Flagstaff, AZ and by the time we got gas and stopped in Needles CA we were back in summer clothes. We drove through the desert and mountains, paid $4.79 a gallon for gas in Needles, CA and had to stop at the border of CA to have our ice chest checked for fruits and vegetables. We saw the Google car somewhere in the middle of nowhere California and by that night, it was trying to rain and we were having to figure out a new campsite to go to. The first one we tried was closed and thankfully we found a second one fairly close to the HWY and open. We set up camp again in the dark and had dinner before it decided to rain. Once my head hit the pillow I was out and slept soundly to the gentle sound of rain. We survived day two but we still had two more days on the road before we would arrive in Seattle.
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![]() Thrifty Sunday and a bonus blog for the week... So this morning I realized that yesterday was the first day of fall and as I began to look around my house I noticed I didn't have many fall touches. My first thought was I need a new throw pillow that is cozy and will go into the winter months. I had this great fuzzy sweater that shrunk up some time ago and has just been sitting and waiting in my fabric pile to be turned into something new. So in the time it took me to watch Tangled, I made this cute new pillow for my couch! It was so easy and I only have basic sewing skills and no machine so I am very happy with the results. Bonus!! I can take the cover off and wash it or use the pillow form again to change out the look on my couch without having to store a bunch of seasonal pillows! What I love about today's thrifty projects was there was no cost. I had everything at my house and I completed both items in under 2 hours! Now if the weather would just feel like fall I would be one happy girl. Hope you enjoyed today's bonus blog and thrifty projects!
Have a great day and Happy Fall! ~Kendra ![]() It's Friday! For whatever reason, this week has been both fast and slow and I am glad the weekend is here! Earlier this week I introduced a few changes for the blog. I have decided that I will post a new article on my blog once a week on Fridays (not sure of a time or if I will even have an exact time). I figured it would better to start off small and just post once a week so I wouldn't burn myself out, get overwhelmed and my readers will know when to come and see what's new! So for this week and my first official Friday post, I'm keeping it simple. You will find photographs of the pottery I did this past spring at Texas Tech University. I am still working in this style with the carving, although my glazes will need to change now that I no longer have access to a soda kiln. That will be an adventure (possible headache) for another day. Of course I am refining and developing my pottery every time I work. ![]() Well I have finally edited most of our trip pictures: 900 something, only 500 left to go! So for the next week or so I will be posting about our trip to and from Seattle for the National Conference of Education of the Ceramics Arts. I can't believe it took so long! Well here it goes! Have a great Tuesday ~Kendra On a warm and windy Friday afternoon, after weeks of planning, looking over google maps, campsites in four states, grocery list, and packing check list, we were finally ready to load the car and hit the road. I was a bundle of excited and nervous energy as Jon and I got into the car to leave Lubbock for our grand adventure out to the west coast. Of course the first part of the drive from Lubbock to Clovis, NM and on to Albuquerque, NM was been there, seen that. 321 miles down, quite a few more to go! We hit Albuquerque right around the 5 o'clock rush hour, but traffic on I-40 was flowing good so we blazed on through to make our way to Winslow, Arizona. We started hearing a bit of a rattling noise, but the roads were rough and didn't think to much about it. Being on 1-40 really was like the scenes from Pixar's Cars of all the country side and made me think of that song, Get your kicks on Route 66. We stopped at a Shell station in Gallup, NM (I do believe) and for the first time all day, we had trouble with the gas card. Of course their customer service was already closed and the automated system was of no use to get the card validated for the night. Hiccup #1 of the trip... ![]() So recently I saw this t-shirt that said, "Feed a starving artist, Buy Art" and it got me thinking about how broke I was and how much I love food. I felt it was a bit ironic since most people think of artist as well a "starving artist" and here I am broke. Don't worry though, I eat lot's of...(pause for dramatic effect) fresh fruit, vegetables, and lots of other healthy food! So here's the deal... I am an artist and I love food and I refuse to fall into the "starving artist" category. So I renamed the blog page the not so starving artist and that is what I intend to be. It also means a few changes for my blog. Yay! I love new stuff! I am going to start adding articles about food, pottery and it's function/relation with food, and maybe some recipes I have tried out from Pinterest, my cookbooks or things I have made up. Of course I will still be doing sneak peaks and other normal articles that I write here on my blog as well as working on being more consistent with posting. So that is some of the new stuff coming up and I am super excited! Of course that t-shirt does speak the truth! Happy Monday and have a great week! ~Kendra ![]() Amelia the first day I brought her home Well somehow, the summer has come and gone and I have neglected my website and blog. So what's been new with me you might ask? I finished up in May my last semester at Tech for a while. (Basically, since I graduated in December 2011, I am out of money to keep taking ceramic and art classes as a "secondary degree".) I taught quite a bit of art classes at Hodges this summer, did very little traveling and the traveling I did was for weddings, and adopted a new kitten. Sometime in May, my sister came to me saying one of her professor's had some kittens they were giving away and asked if I was interested. At first, I didn't think I was ready. It hadn't been quite a year since Ziggy ran away and while I missed having a pet, I wasn't sure having to train and deal with a kitten was on the agenda yet. But I contacted the family and once I saw Amelia, I knew I had to have her. This was the first pet I had ever had the chance to name and it came down between Amelia (from Doctor Who) and Luna (from Harry Potter). Yes, yes, yes... I know I am a nerd, but it is really fun to say "Come along Pond" to Amelia and watch her chase after you! So that was BIG change #1! What has been BIG change #2? I bought a pottery wheel and set up my first studio!! Now I have a fairly large walk in closet for a rented townhouse. The top two pictures are before shots of my extremely messy closet (just half of it, the other half is behind the wall and curtain.) Saying something is behind the curtain makes me think of Wizard of OZ. Anywho... Now my studio is not very large, it measures a whooping four feet three inches by nine feet with a set of built in shelves. I have managed to put in a wheel, books, tools, another set of shelves and create a small but working studio! Of course Amelia loves being in my studio when I'm working, but she has been really good and nothing has been broken or messed with! Bad news about my studio being so small is I have to store my clay buckets in my living room, well at least until I figure a better place for them. I'm already thinking of how I can move some of my clothes and expand my studio haha! Who needs a closet for clothes? I would rather more studio space! BIG change #3... My sister and I found a new roommate! I felt a bit like Chandler on that episode of Friends when he was interviewing strangers to move in after putting an ad in the paper. Well maybe not quite like Chandler since he was really wanting the roommate that was a photographer and hung out with models or the time he ended up with crazy Edie... but the interviewing part and some of the crazy part. I put an ad on craigslist and interviewed several girls until we found a great roommate! Although at one point I wasn't sure I was going to find anyone that was going to mesh well with us. And I guess the final change was little and BIG... After going to school from 1990-2012 (22 years... yikes!) I wasn't returning to school this fall. I have spent almost my entire life in school and I had really come to love it. I know nothing else and I had lots of emotions about not going back. The week leading up to the first week of school and the first week my sister and new roommate went back to class were pretty blue for me. But now we are a few weeks into the semester and I can see how stressed out they are and how much homework and projects they have going on and I feel better! That sounds terrible, but now I have time to read a book, enjoy my tea on the porch, and I get to work in my studio when I am not teaching or designing fruit arrangements! It's great! Now I will probably be bummed when I see that first student loan payment, but that is a worry for another day.
So those are my changes and the highlights from this summer. I am still working on pictures from mine and Jon's trip to NCECA. I am now way behind on that, but I will still post about the trip. I also promise I will be writing and updating more. I don't know if anyone really reads this or not, but I know no one will want to read it if I don't keep it updated! I also have some ideas and plans in store for my blog/website and Etsy. That's all for today! Have a great weekend! ~Kendra |
the not so starving artist blog:Here's the deal... I am an artist and I love food! I refuse to be labeled or included in the "starving artist" category. Now, while I have been broke... I want to be an artist and eat my cake too (metaphorically and literally!) Archives
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