Glass Blowing!

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to go glass blowing with my group from work. We went to Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle for a 3 hour class. After a demonstration, we broke up into three groups and began working with 2000+ degree glass.

First you begin with gathering some glass from the furnace.

Add some color (I asked to add some 'dicot'-formal name for what I refer to glitter glass)

Heat it up in the Glory Hole (yes, that is really what they call it)

Add some swirls (I asked for this addition)

Mold the glass

Blow in air to increase the size

What? Did you say 'stop'?

Shape the glass

Look at those beautiful colors and swirls!

Cut the base

Little assistance from Kari

We made 'sucky' bowls, you suck the air in, which creates a bowl (cleaver name)

Heating the bottom, so it is even

This is a globe that someone else made

Kiln that decreases in temperature for 24 hours, then they are ready

Interesting fact, Kari, my groups instructor, worked on a team at another studio that made all the glass pendant lights for Starbucks stores world wide. The lights were all made with a mold, so they would be uniform. The group worked for three years making all the lights. That comes to 150 a day, seven days a week. What a great contract, but that is a lot of the same thing everyday. I will never look at the lights the same!

Finished product, isn't it pretty?

Love, Love, Love the 'Glitter Glass'

I highly recommend taking a glass blowing class, it was an amazing experience! Living Social actually has a deal for a glass ornament class at Redmond School of Glass now, it is available until tomorrow for purchase, however it doesn't expire until Feb. 2013.

Seattle Snow Storm

Last week we had a snow storm that shut down the city and left many without power. It started snowing on Saturday and continued through to Thursday before it warmed up and turned to rain on Friday. I have never been so happy to see rain in my life!





These two photos were taken on Monday when the snow was new and pretty



Then the snow kept coming and things got pretty covered.



This is a close up, about 10-12inches of snow



The trees were getting weighed down by the weight of the snow, don't worry they bounced back. Others, did lose branches and that can be a very scary noise as well as a complete white out.

Coupon Savings!

For the past year and a half I have been trying to use coupons and pay attention to sales. I even follow a few coupon blogs to get more info and tips. Lately, I haven't had much time to organize or even clip my coupons. So during the snow storm (previous post), I took advantage of my time at home to get all the coupons in my pile cut and filed away. I also spent a couple hours going through the Sunday paper before venturing out on my shopping trip.

The reward: 50% savings. Hooray!!! I didn't even use that many coupons; three manufactures and two store coupons. But I made sure that everything was on sale. Based on the total, you can see that I didn't spend a lot or get that many items. I was just refilling what was used during the storm, aka things for the freezer as well as some canned items.