in the works...

I'm feeling lucky and ohhh so Irish.
Good things are in our future.

Sometimes....

I just want to runway and hideout for a little while-

I'm fairly good at cultivating a quiet space for myself in my day to day but now and then my schedule seems to get the better of me and I feel overwhelmed. Today is just one of those days. For no particular reason- it's just life can be hard sometimes. Right? Anyway it's exacerbated by the cold, super dry and cloudy day here in Minneapolis... so I'm daydreaming in the Blog-o-sphere when I found this post on show + tell. I can't think of anything better than climbing into this little hideout and feeling the warm hydrating air, listening the to quiet expansive forest and doing a whole lot of quiet nothing- just for a little while.
Then I want to be right back here, in my life (I get homesick pretty quickly).

Check it out!

My Mom
(miss Pat Murphy herself)
is posting a website update today:Check it out:

8th Annual Valentines' Day Update

Thursday, February 4th

at 6 pm Eastern Time

Headed out and about

All the boxes are packed up- many were shipped out last night- and now Claude and I are headed out for another run... I got him all bundled up and couldn't stop laughing: Hmmmm, I wonder where that new bear Sal came from?! I'm may be sending out all these little bears and animals but I'm keeping this one right here with me.

It's been a CRAZY morning-

Thank you so much for all your emails and orders! I'm still working to get though them all, but as it stands now, all the pieces are sold. Because this was a slightly smaller than usual update, pieces sold even faster than usual. So sorry to all who didn't get the opportunity to purchase something special for Valentine's Day. If you tried to order this morning and you haven't heard from me yet- I'll be emailing you soon...

Again- Thank you all for your continued support of my work! I'm already working on something special for St.Pat's and and and...

New Pieces

All the new Valentines Day pieces are now up on my website- come by!

Don't forget-

Today is the Valentines Day Update!

coming together-

Every one's gathered together to get
their photos taken for the Update:

Preparing for an update is a lengthy process.

Obviously, there's the time spent making all the pieces - but once that's finished the actually website prep begins. I'm in the thick of it now- so here's an outline of what my day will entail:

• Shoot each animal on a white fabric sweep (love my new camera: Nikon D5000)
  
• Remove the background in Photoshop (I use a variety of tools to highlight and delete the background area)
  
• Hand write all the descriptions
  
• Scan and copy handwriting into each Photoshop file
  
• Program the new web pages (I write my own HTML in BBEdit)
  
• load all the new files onto the server (I use Transmit)
  

PRESTO! Instant Website Update- well it may not be instant but I'm happy to take the extra time to make everything look just so. Details- for me it's all about the details. Okay, now back to work.

(side note: I know I know - I've been giving you all a lot of sneak peaks of the pieces I'll be posting tomorrow- but rest assured, I'm not pre-selling anything.)

{^_^}

Ayumi Horie

If you were to come to my house for tea, you'd find my cupboards overflowing with pottery- especially with the work of Ayumi Horie. I just can't seem to get enough. These beautiful pieces make me happy each and every time I hold one in my hand.

Looking to start your own collection? Ayumi is posting pots from February 1-4 sporadically on her new Etsy Shop.