Painting At "The Potter's Hand"

This past Thursday Nathan and I had a very fun Mommy and Nathan adventure. We dropped Benjamin off at Grandma and Poppo's house then came back home. Our friends Aylin and her son Josh came over then we all went together in our van and had lunch at McDonald's. After lunch we went to a really neat paint-your-own-pottery place out in Buffalo Gap called "The Potter's Hand" that is owned and run by Matt and Melissa, some friends of ours from church. We attended a "smART KIDS" Session where Melissa read us a book then the boys got to paint two ornaments each.

Here's a cute shot of Nathan and Josh just inside the door to the shop.
Melissa read us the Dr. Suess book "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" then the boys picked out their ornaments to paint. They both did a great job. I was very impressed with Nathan's artistic ability (spoken like a proud mom I know). As far as I know, this was his first painting experience. He was very thorough and made sure there was no white left showing on his blue bird and green Christmas tree. We even put some red dots on the tree to look like ornaments (ideally).

"Here Mom let me paint your camera." Uh, no.

I helped Nathan hold the ornaments so that he could paint the edges.

Josh had fun painting his gingerbread man and Christmas tree.
I think the boys were equally entertained by the fact that they got to pick up some pecans for Josh to take home with him before we left.
You just never know when you're going to get a really great shot. I love this pic of Nathan with the soft shadows across his sweet little face. Our friend Steve, who is an awesome photographer, loves to work in natural light - I can understand why.

Since Nathan did so well with the painting of his own ornaments I decided that I wanted to take Benjamin and do the same thing. I was just going to pick out a good day after Thanksgiving for us to have a Mommy and Benjamin adventure but I wanted him to have his ornaments at the same time as Nathan so they could put them all on the tree together. Anyway, David and I took Nathan to Grammy and Granpop's yesterday morning and then took Benjamin to paint his own ornaments.

He also did an absolutely fabulous job. He chose a gingerbread man and a star.

His star is blue on one side and yellow on the other.

I asked Benjamin if he wanted some red paint and he said that he did so one side of his gingerbread man has some nice flourishes of red.

Since Dad was with us, he was able to take this video of Benjamin painting. It was so interesting to me to see the differences in my sons' painting techniques. Nathan was much more into the dabbing and dotting method but as you can see Benjamin was making some real brushstrokes here. To each his own.

You gotta love that big smile on the face of a child satisfied with a job well done. (He's actually just laughing at me - I am pretty silly you know.)

While I painted Benjamin's initials on his ornaments he and Dad looked around the shop. He did a great job 'not touching just pointing at' all the lovely ceramics in the shop.

Before we left, Melissa read us the story of "Flo The Lying Fly" from the Max Lucado Hermie and Friends series of children's books. We own the video of this one so Benjamin was familiar with the story and commented on it throughout the book.

If you had asked me a week ago if I thought it was I good idea to take a two- or three-year-old boy into a ceramics shop I would have probably said, "No way, are you crazy?" with the whole bull-in-a-china-closet scenario running through my head. However, our experiences this week have changed my thinking. The shop is very low-key and kid-friendly and a great creative outlet for young minds. I hope we get to go again sometime.