Ceramics? Yes, please!

As many of you know, I decided not to register for classes this semester. I made this choice for a few reasons:
1-School can get VERY stressful for me, and everything I've read suggests that stress is really hard on a developing fetus. There's research to support the idea that excessive stress in utero causes-at the least-anxiety and depression, and at the worst, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Since anxiety runs in my family, I feel like I have to work extra hard to keep my son from being completely anxiety-ridden, or possibly depressed. I believe that there's a lot that I can do while pregnant to keep a lot of anxiety from being passed on to Henry. There may still be a genetic predisposition written into his DNA, but I'm convinced that it would affect him much less if he didn't begin his life stressed out in the womb. So not being in school right now is something that I chose to do to greatly reduce the amount of stress in my life.
2- "Pregnancy Brain" is a very real thing. I usually enjoy a quick memory, nearly effortless information recall, and can count on pretty legit critical thinking skills, but the pregnancy hormones seem to have taken that all away from me. I can't keep very many things in mind at once, I forget things that have just happened, and I don't even have basic math skills! It's incredibly frustrating to feel like my mind has taken a vacation and that I'm just not myself. I can imagine how much worse it would be if I was trying to memorize or analyze information (and then recall it later during a test) with the added pressure of a letter grade being assigned and having a good GPA to protect. Basically, I would ruin my GPA and probably end up retaking classes after Henry is born.  

So! For these reasons, I decided to take the semester off. The only question after that was what I would do with all of the time on my hands. I decided to sign up for a 6-month membership with a yoga studio, and to get a pass to the community center where I have access to a ceramics studio.
Today was my first day in the studio, and it went much better than I thought it would. It has been almost a year since I took Ceramics 1 at UVU, and I anticipated being really rusty. I thought that it would take me quite a while to wedge the clay properly, center the clay, and practice making the clay take shape. I was surprised that it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to get things going. I was still a bit rusty, but not as rusty as I thought I would be! I didn't make any pieces worth keeping today, but I anticipated today just being a practice day. I also realized while I was throwing that I didn't even know what I wanted to make. I made a bunch of stuff last summer (I'll show you pictures shortly, don't worry), but didn't realize until afterward that I didn't really have a place for all of my beautiful creations. I put my mugs away in a box because I knew that they were going to be Christmas presents, but the other things needed a home, and didn't really have one. So now I'm brainstorming things I could make that I could use, find a home for, or give away (if anyone out there has something in mind that you would like me to try and make for you just let me know). The only thing I've come up with so far is bigger mugs to drink out of, but that's it. I'm sure I'll let you know what I come up with though.

Alright, here are some pictures:

My favorite things to make are the jars, since I love the way they look, and I love fitting the lids on top of them, and there are so many awesome things that you can do with jars! I just put the short, orange-ish one in the last picture to use holding my necklaces on top of our dresser. The rest remain unemployed (except the black one in the 2nd picture that I had to throw away because the lid bonded completely with the jar when it was being fired).

There are a couple more things that I've been filling my time with, but more on that another time.