Pottering madness

Last week saw mine and my OH's 1st year anniversary. Yes I know, 1 year anniversary and we already have a child together, we've moved fast!

Our first date was originally in February 2011 but we recognise march as when we were an official item. So to mark our first official anniversary we arranged for my mam to have both kids. We drove up to drop them off on Thursday night, stayed at my mams before making a swift departure on Friday morning.

Ahead of us was a 2 hour drive. I hadn't told my OH what I had planned for the day ahead, I just dropped hints that I hoped would make her think of something completely different. I kept telling her she needed old clothes (truth) and making sure she wasn't scared of confined spaces, or darkness and the occasional creepy crawly (all these being false) can you guess what she thought we were doing? Yes that's right she thought we were going pot holing.

Instead after a 2 hour drive through some beautiful North Yorkshire countryside as pictured above we pulled up outside our destination, we of course were going to be doing pottery for a few hours taken by a skilled tutor, just me and my OH. I remember on our first few dates we had talked about doing this as it was something she had always wanted to do and something I had previously studied so it seemed like a good idea to spend part of our anniversary doing something like this, OH was pleased at the days activity and, I think a little relieved it wasn't Pot Holing

We got to the pottery venue and was greeted by our tutor for the day, she was a nice lady with over 20years experience, she had a shop full of home made items that were very impressive. We went through to the studio and we began working on our individual masterpieces. Our first project was to make a bowl, first we had to design what we would decorate our bowl with....

Then we had to roll out the clay and start sculpting out designs onto the clay....

Once this was done we then had to cut out our designs and start sculpting the bowl itself so it actually looked like a bowl that could be used. This meant getting a bowl and making some funky shapes and lining the bowl with it....

And viola our bowls were complete....

Once we had done the bowls there was time to use the wheel. Our tutor taught us first and made it look very easy. The OH had a go firstly and was quite unsuccessful as she struggled to get her pot started it eventually collapsed.....

Then it was my go, I found it a lot easier as first anticipated and nearly managed to finish the pot only to fail at the last hurdle of trying to raise the walls of the pot. Eventually we managed to both make a pot with relative success we are both quite proud of these....

After pottering was a trip to hawes for some lunch, I always remember going to Hawes as a child and I didn't like it then, I found it boring and a waste of my time that could be spent playing football or hide and seek but now as what I'd like to think a sensible adult I could appreciate the town it's beauty and the surrounding countryside....

After our trip out and drive back through the beautiful countryside we went home to get changed for our meal. We plumped to go to Deanos in Harrogate after hearing much about it. It's a Tapas bar that doesn't restrict itself to Spanish tapas and instead does smaller versions of other dishes. It was very nice and each dish was perfectly presented and was gradually brought out, they were brought out one by one so you could enjoy them each and didn't feel rushed to eat them do the others don't go cold. Dishes we decided on was the mini steak pie with black pudding, eggs and steak, king prawn salad, roasted duck and 2 others that escape my mind at the moment.

After the meal we escaped to our favourite bar in H Town, the blues cafe bar we enjoyed some live music before going home and enjoying a peaceful house with no children and a well deserved lie in in the morning.

Here's to many more anniversaries.