Such a Great Christmas I Forgot to Blog

Merry Little Christmas. Tonight, on 12th Night, we will take down the tree. This seems a little late to people who decorate in November, but we put the tree up on the 24th, so it is not all that long.
This is the tree before the carnage of opening gifts. I like the picture because it shows off the corner of silver vapour barrier and strapping so well. Notice the paintings hanging on the strapping. When we finally get dry wall I will miss this look. I may have to paint the walls silver with brown horizontal stripes.
We survived the holidays. In fact we had a rather good one this year. The other one's parents visited from Victoria, and I took to heart what my M-I-L said on the phone before they arrived "Don't do anything special..." So I did the bare minimum, ie. cleaned the toilet, vacuumed the pet hair and thought about meals in advance. That is stellar housekeeping for me. Normally we would have travelled to my parents for a few days over the holiday, but we decided beforehand that an extra four plus dog and cat would be a strain on my mother's house so we only went for one day, sans cat. This was the first meeting of the four parents. Some people have expressed surprise that in 15 years of co-habitation our parents have never met. I guess this is unusual. But not really because his parents live 6000 km away and my parents don't travel any farther than a day trip.
One of the things that made this a good holiday was that I got a big surprise! Think about it, when was the last time you were truly surprised at Christmas? I cannot remember the last time. I'm sure I was under 10. Often I already know what I'm getting. Often I've picked it out to ensure that I like it. Little surprises are common. The type that makes you pleased someone thought about a gift that was perfect for you. A big surprise means that there is planning and subterfuge and it leaves you speechless for several minutes. Which is what happened to me on Christmas morning.
I got this.
Which was a complete surprise. It's a new-to-me pottery wheel. It was a complete surprise because I already had a wheel, which worked OK, but was a little slow, and a little small and it shuddered a little making it hard to throw tall things. In our over zealous kijiji adventures last spring we acquired 4 wheels in various states of repair. I really didn't need a wheel, which is what made the new fast, quiet, big, smooth running one so great. It's like having a Pinto and getting Porche.
The hardest thing was that I had to leave it for a whole day and go visit my parents before I got to try it out. But I did try it out on Boxing Day.
This is me and the First Pot with my F-I-L looking on. I offered to teach him to throw, but he declined getting dirty. (That's my favourite part) We reorganized the studio space so I had more shelf space for storing works in progress, and I have been working at finding my style ever since. More on that in another post.