Announcing: January's Sculpture Project

So, now that it's halfway through January, I've finally decided what I want to do for my January sculpture project, my first official project of the year not including finishing projects started in 2009.  I'm making a jewelry tree.  Currently most of my jewelry is in a plastic bag, so I thought I would give it a good home.  I don't have any "real" jewelry (i.e. diamonds, gold, silver, etc.), just "costume" type jewelry, but I still want a cool place to keep it other than a bag where everything gets tangled and broken.  In fact, if I didn't have a hot glue gun, one of my favorite pairs of earrings would be in the trash can right now because of that stupid bag!  So, tonight I made the armature, or skeleton, for the tree so it would be strong and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the jewelry.  Here's a picture:

As soon as I can get my hands on another block of clay, I will mold it around the branches to give it a realistic look.  I'm going to add some leaves and puncture small holes along the edges of the leaves to hang my earrings on.  It should turn out pretty cool.  I'll post a picture of the final project when I'm finished.  I'm excited to be making something creative AND practical!  Oh, and the base is just an old circular saw blade that my cousin donated to me for some other project I never got around to doing.  :)  I'm going to leave the blade showing to add some interest. It also adds a touch of irony and perhaps a bit of an environmental statement that the "tree" will be growing through the hole of a saw blade.  Deep.  You can call me a tree-hugger now.

Tamarindo: Nature's Sour Patch Kids

Giovanni served his mission in Puerto Rico, where they would pick and eat fruit from the trees as they walked and avocados grew to the size of your head.  At times he reminisces about the wonderful fruits he would eat and how delicious they tasted ripe off the trees.  Of course I am jealous every time he talks about it.  One fruit in particular that he loved is called a tamarindo.  It looks like this:

They are basically seeds covered with a sweet tangy fruit that almost has the consistency of gummy candy--like fruit snacks.  Well, to Gio's great delight we actually found this wonderful creation at the grocery store last week!  They tasted a bit different than Gio remembers them in Puerto Rico (as we suspected, since they have to travel so far).  Apparently in Puerto Rico, they are sweet, tangy and delectable...but when we popped them in our mouths we got a surprise.  They were so sour!!!  It was pretty funny to watch our faces contort, but all in all, they were delicious.  Gio called them "Nature's Sour Patch Kids."

So we recommend trying them, but preferably straight from the tree!

Paoli Breakfast and The Real Reason I Wanted Sharpies for Christmas

Gio made granola this week with oats, walnuts, banana chips, and dried cherries. So good!

I asked Gio to get me a pack of different colored Sharpies for Christmas. Why did I want Sharpies for Christmas? The possibilities are endless...

Fun with clay...

I took several art classes in high school. I loved drawing, painting, and print work, but my favorite was 3D art, or in other works, sculpting. I'm no prodigy or anything, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of it...the kind of thing where you can get lost for hours and not even notice. I've dabbled it in a little since high school...I carved a plaster sculpture of Mt. Rushmore with the heads of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead of the presidents for my brother, Mike, for Christmas in 2005 or 2006 (can't remember which). I wish I had a picture of it, but I never took one. I'm not sure if he even still has the sculpture. Then, last year in January I bought a hunk of clay so I could start a new project: a chess set for my brother-in-law, Justin. It was quite an undertaking to begin with, in fact, Gio didn't think I was serious when I was explaining to him what I wanted to make. Here's the idea: a physics themed set with a bust of Einstein for the King, the equation E=MC2 for the queen, rockets for the bishops, microscopes for the knights, mushroom clouds for the rooks, and apples (symbolizing gravity) for the pawns. I figured I would make one of each out of clay, then make a mold to duplicate the figures exactly. Well, I got farther than Gio expected me to, but I ran into some hiccups with the molding process, and some general laziness, but a year later I'm back in the game! Because of a bad molding technique last year, the rocket broke, and the apple stem fell off. I haven't finished the microscope yet, but here are the pieces I have so far:

In order to complete this project, I will need to invest some substantial dollars into it. The proper molding technique uses supplies which are sort of pricy. Also, I'll need to make a new rocket (which won't be hard). I just need to find a place to buy the goods, and work up the motivation to finish it. Hopefully in the next couple months I'll find both of them. This is one reason that one of my goals for the year is to FINISH one sculpture every month.

Another reason I have that goal is my other unfinished clay project of 2009. Last September or so I pulled out what was left of that hunk of clay to release some steam and find my "happy place." :) I worked on it for a couple of nights, but I ended up getting frustrated with the proportions on the piece I was making. It's a girl standing on a cliff with the wind blowing her hair and her dress. To me it symbolizes that moment right before you make a bad decision...the moment where you realize you haven't jumped yet, and you can still turn around and come down.

The proportions are off because I didn't look at any pictures while I was sculpting. It was just for fun, so I didn't really care if it was perfect, and I didn't want to be bound by an image. I just wanted to see what would come out. I don't have fancy clay tools, so I used a plastic spoon, one of the tongs of a plastic fork, the little wire part of a twist-tie, and my hands. Even though I tried to keep it moist for a while so I could finish it, I waited too long. It's dried out now, so I can't fix the proportion problems, I can only fine sand it a bit and clear coat it for protection. It is what it is.

So, one sculpture a month in 2010 is my goal, and I haven't really thought about January's project yet. I've worked with clay and plaster the most...a little bit with wire, so I'm not even sure which medium to use. I'd like to try something new, but I also want to improve my clay technique. We'll see.

We eat our vegetables...

In keeping with my goal of trying a new recipe every week (so that I can broaden my food horizons and practice my cooking), I decided to try eggplant lasagna. I have made regular lasagna and it turned out really good, so I thought I would try it with eggplant slices instead of noodles. It actually tasted pretty good. To be honest, I was hesitant, but I really liked it! Here's the process and the finished product (the pictures probably don't do it justice, especially if you don't like eggplant):

So that's that...week one: a success. Why eggplant lasagna? I'm not sure. It seems like lately I've had a fascination with vegetables. It amazes me that you can put a seed in the ground and several months later have this perfectly packaged beautiful piece of FOOD! It really is so complex and yet nature does all the work...we just pick it up at the grocery store (or if you're really cool, grow it in your backyard). With so many thousands of processed food products available to us, it's sometimes easy to forget about the vegetables. But how wonderful is nature that the very same things that are good for our bodies grow right out of the ground?? What are we doing spending time and money fabricating what nature already got right? C'mon, people, vegetables are where it's at.

By the way, Tillamook ice cream is also where it's at. Check it out....dessert at the Paoli's: Cookies and Creeeeeeeeeeeeam!

Split Pea Soup

When I got home from work today, my wonderful husband had a surprise for me. Delicious split pea soup simmering away in the crock-pot! It turned out great and I was once again impressed with his cooking skills! I'm a lucky lucky lady! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Giovanni and I are so excited for 2010! Already it's shaping up to be a great year. Gio's good friend Tyler from high school and his wife Amy came up to Utah from California and spent New Years with us. It was a blast! They brought some fireworks and HUGE sparkler-like things so we set them off at midnight to ring in the new year.

Today Giovanni and I were talking about the upcoming year and our hopes, expectations, and desires. We both had a hard year in 2009, so the beginning of a new year is exciting and hopeful for us! As we were talking about all the things we wanted to achieve this year, we decided to write them down and put them on the fridge to remind us what we are working towards this year. You could call them New Year's Resolutions, I guess, but we prefer to just call them goals. New Year's Resolution has a bad connotation because they are kept so rarely! We decided to each pick eleven goals and call them our 11 before 2011. We jointly decided to work on some main spiritual goals--following the counsel of Alma 34: to counsel with the Lord always, gaining more understanding of principles like faith, repentance, the Atonement, and the love of God. Then we each chose a few personal goals that we wanted to reach by the end of the year. Here's a few of them. Some of them we will both be working on even though it is in our personal goals.

Giovanni's Goals:

Get outside or take a walk each morning to bring peace for the day

Complete P90X (a really hard workout DVD series) by April

Go snowboarding as often as possible

Read one scientific journal article per week

Read one book each month

Tessa's Goals:

Learn to make one new recipe each week

Get down to 150 pounds (finally)

Try to go one month consecutively without watching TV or movies

Get better at Spanish

Compete in a sprint triathlon

Work on my hobby of sculpting by finishing one sculpture each month

Pay off all our debts

Keep a clean and organized home

Keep a log of 2010--written, photograph and video

So as you can see, neither of us have come up with 11 yet, but we're off to a good start. This year is going to bring some great new adventures, milestones, and big changes to our life together, but I think that the hardships of 2009 prepared us and strengthened us. This year Gio will be starting medical school in Kirksville, Missouri, so we will be making our first cross-country move and settling in to a new life in a new town (a tiny town at that!). We're ready for the new year and as always we're excited to spend it together!

Here's a picture for your viewing pleasure....we both look like weirdos, but I had to post it because I laughed so hard when I saw it! Celebrating the New Year...