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Making Things Merry and Bright

Tonight, we returned to  All Fired Up to continue one of our big traditions of making/painting ornaments. I’m sure I’ve told this, but I’ll tell a quick version. Our first Christmas came 4 months after our wedding and during that time, we had 9/11, loss of a job, loss of a car, and new job that required Stephen to work 70-80 hours a week in a restaurant 1.5 hours away. It’s a very good  thing we dated for 6 years prior. We didn’t see each other during our first year. But one night right before Christmas, he was able to be home earlier than 11pm and he asked me to plan something to do.  We had NO money. I mean…seriously stretching macaroni and cheese as far as possible. We didn’t have money to go to a movie or show or even a cheap date night. I saw these wooden ornaments at Walmart and “borrowed” some paint from school. We painted 2 ornaments and he thought that was the coolest thing. We got to sit for a few hours and actually talk and share more Christmas memories from our childhood.

The next year, things were a little better financially, so we did it again.

12 years later, we are still painting ornaments. Three years ago, I casually mentioned All Fired Up, the local pottery place and we decided to try painting some ornaments. That is how we do it now.

These are some from those first few years.

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And here are some pottery pieces from previous years.

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Here is where we do it! All Fired Up. We paint and wait a week for them to fire them up.

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We decided to do some flat ornaments this year. He chose a round ornament shape so he could “get creative” with the paint writers and brush paints. I chose a round tile that they drilled a hole for the ribbon. I had an idea and already sketched it out before we got there. The time consuming part is you have to use minimum 3 coats of paint to get the vivid saturated color. It takes about 2-3 hours from start to finish.

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All finished and we should have them in about a week!