AgtSpooky's Hangout

Picked up my finished glass Christmas ornaments last night at the park district. Santa turned out adorable, even with one black eye and one green eye (sometimes all raw glass looks the same before it's melted~) and I really like how all the greens melted together on the tree. The things are so darn big though they'll probably break the tree branch! LOL!

Gosh, is it Monday already? Ugh. Not quite ready for another week to start.

Let's see, what did I get up to over the weekend?

Saturday was our running around day. Got up early and the hubby and I went out to breakfast at a new place. It's a restaurant that's actually inside a local hotel. We got an advertisement from them in the mail with a Buy One Get One Free coupon for their breakfast buffet. $13.00 for both of us? Sure, we'll check it out! The service was excellent and the food was…good. I would've said "great" but everything was just lukewarm. Nothing was hot. Everything tasted great but barely warm pancakes and waffles was a bummer. I doubt we'll go back.

We hit the road after that to head back to the glass studio one more time to pick up my pendants. I was irritated once again because they said they'd call last Tuesday and by Friday I still hadn't heard from them and had to call them again. Terrible customer service. They're lucky that this time the pendants turned out the way they were supposed to and I'm pleased with them. Here is the before and after pics:

John wanted to head to World Market after the studio to pick up some international foods he's been enjoying. I started wandering around and ended up finding a large pillow I wanted for the living room. John found everything he was looking for, plus quite a few extras from the display of Irish foods for St. Patrick's Day. One of which was a mix to make Irish soda bread. Somehow we ended up in the furniture section and we both fell in love with a sofa and chair set. I've always wanted a sofa with a chaise lounge. And this one can flip so that the chaise can be on either side depending on your living room set up. John hates the couches we have now and would prefer a couple of regular chairs. So this met both our needs. I thought it was a reasonable price but John said he gets fantastic coupons from them via email for furniture all the time. So we're going to wait a bit. I think I know what I'll be spending those gift cards from work on!

Back at the house we unpacked and I ended up taking a nap. Woke up to the wonderful smell of bread baking. Yep, John had made the Irish soda bread. It turned out fantastic! That was pretty much our dinner - fresh warm bread with real Irish butter. Melted in our mouths!

Sunday was a lazy day. Caught up on TV shows, did the laundry, made butterscotch pudding and finished reading Insurgent. Good book. I'm ready for the movie now!

Forgot to mention that the weather was just gorgeous out. It was in the mid-60's. We opened up the living room windows for the first time! Bean about lost her mind. :-)  She was on the windowsill plastered up against the screen, watching the squirrels run around on the grass in front of the house.

So that's what I did. How was YOUR weekend?

So I got to pick up my finished glass fusion piece yesterday afternoon. It turned out nice! I'm quite happy with it. I think the only thing I would've done differently was put the circular ones at the top closer together so that when they melted they would've touched, creating a better looking rainbow. Bu other than that I'm pleased with how the frit worked using the cookie cutters to make the leaves and flowers.

Here are the before and after pics:

Next class is February 21st, making glass jewelry!

Had a great day on Saturday. My buddy charityflint and I headed back to our new glass studio to tackle another project - mouth blown Christmas ornaments. This would be a first for us both and we were both excited and nervous.

It truly was a nerve-wracking experience when we first got started, listening to all of the instructions, learning how to work with the propane gas flame, knowing you only had five seconds to pull the hot glass out and blow the ornament. Yikes!

Thank goodness we were given 10 blanks to make, because I didn't start off too well. It's a learning process to know the exact precise moment the glass is hot enough to remove from the flame. My first two I was barely able to blow, so they're kind of…mini ornaments. My third was a complete disaster and my only true reject. By that time I was getting really discouraged, watching Charity and everyone else having such an easy time of it right from the start. I was honestly ready to just throw in the towel and leave. But Charity and Mike, who owns the studio, kept encouraging me to not give up. And I'm glad they did, for suddenly on my next try everything worked perfectly! And the next six after that!

And here I am actually blowing the ornament:

We get to pick up the finished, cooled, ornaments on Thursday. Can't wait to see how they turned out! I'll be sure to post some pics of them.

Hey all, happy Monday! How was everyone's weekend? Do anything fun?

On Saturday, myself and my buddy charityflint had the first of our four-week stained glass class. This time we got to pick our own pattern and colors of glass. I decided on a tulip!

It's a good size, about 8" x 10" and it took nearly three hours to cut and grind all the glass. The white areas are actually clear glass with a neat pattern that you can see when you hold it up to the light. Next week we'll use the copper tape and then we'll start soldering it the week after that. I'm excited to see how it's going to turn out!

Sunday was a slug day. I finished reading a book, made some notes on my next Enterprise story and watched two movies. One was Far East, with Connor Trinneer. It was a TV movie he made for PBS shortly before Enterprise started. That was one strange movie. Connor was, unfortunately, the co-star and I hated the actual star of the movie after about 10 minutes. Connor's sub-plot (a gay naval officer being blackmailed into giving up top secret documents) was waaay more interesting, but it was so disjointed from the rest of the movie. It deserved its own movie! But Connor looked way hot in his Navy uniform. :-)

The other movie I watched was Phantom, with David Duchovny. It was out earlier this year but I missed it at the theater. It was very much like The Hunt for Red October, with a rogue Russian nuclear submarine. David plays the KGB agent that takes over the sub from the captain to start a nuclear war with the United States. It was a good movie (even though I predicted the end) but it was so weird because no one spoke with a Russian accent! WTF? So it was like Americans wearing Russian navy uniforms. That was a strange directoral/writing choice.

And now here we are, Monday again. With me being at DragonCon, this will be the first full week I've worked in two weeks. Ugh.

So what fun and exciting things did all of YOU get up to?

In the midst of the craziness that was my weekend from Hell, I had to go up to the glass studio to pick up my flower bouquet that I made last weekend. Turned out AWESOME. I'm really, really pleased with my first effort at true free-form glass design. Each flower turned out very unique and I'm happy with my color choices. Got myself a vase, sand and colored stones and brought the whole thing into work yesterday. Gotta keep it there because you know, I've got these two cats…. *g*

Check it out, what do you guys think?

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Morning, everyone! And a happy Monday to all of you. Did you have a good weekend? I had a fantastic one!

It started Friday night, when I went with a friend of mine from work to a special yoga class my park district was having. It was called Girls Night Out. My regular instructor Julie was giving the 45 minute class, which was then followed by wine and cheese tasting and presentations by a chiropractor and a life coach.

OMG, what a blast! I was so happy my friend Sharon decided to go with me. We had a great time! Sharon loved the yoga class and is probably going to join as a member. The cheese was very tasty but the wine was fabulous. This is coming from someone who rarely drinks, and doesn't like wine. But I found one that was super yummy - a riesling from Germany. I had two glasses! And Sharon had two as well of one that she also liked. We ended up getting super giggly and probably annoyed the life coach, but she was awful, reading from these 3x5 cards and sounded like a robot.

At the end of the night the photographer from the park district was walking around taking pictures of people at the tables. Everyone was just kind of sitting there, smiling. But when he got to Sharon and I we put our arms around each other and pressed our faces together. Everyone was like, "Aww, that's a great picture!" So who knows, we may end up in the next newsletter! LOL!

Then on Saturday I got together with Sharon again, and our other friend from work, Birute. They decided to take a glass class with me! Again, what a great time we had. It was neat watching the two of them do this for the first time and they both did very well. I snapped a couple of pics of them:

I also got a really good close up of Sharon's heart:

Then it was my turn. I've done this six times now, so they all know me, and this time they let me do everything by myself. No helping hands! We had to do this twisty thing with the glass in the furnace where you let it nearly drip off the rod then quickly spin it to swirl the colors together. Not easy to do but I did it flawlessly. Tim was very impressed with me and told me that I have a natural ability for this. Woot!!

Sharon grabbed my camera and snapped this one of me as I prepared to use the jacks:

We all went out to dinner afterwards and had a great time just hanging out together. At the end of the night we decided that the three of us need to do this more often. :-) I pick up our hearts on Thursday so hopefully I'll have a pic of mine to post on Friday.

Ran a bunch of errands on Sunday and one of the places we went was to the winery that brought the samples so I could get a full bottle. :-)

So yeah, a busy, fun weekend! What did all of YOU do?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.