“If you lined these up, you could definitely guess whose was whose.”

I’ve known these two gals forever. Obviously, Emily, as my sister, has seen it all (she deserves a medal, that one). I met Sommer during our freshman year of high school, and the three of us later roomed together for two years in college.

Since then we’ve all graduated from undergrad, the two of them went on to their respective master’s programs, we’ve had jobs, travels, and experienced the parting and meeting of all varieties of people. Through it all, we try to get together regularly for food. And movies. And movies with food. And food with a side of movies. And tater tots. And cupcakes. (We have…er, I mean had, naturally…refined palates.)

This time we decided to branch out and get artsy.

“When all else fails, just go with dots.”

Emily suggested we go to one of those paint-your-own-pottery joints for this particular outing. There were shelves and shelves of options. Plates and cups and figurines. Vases, pitchers and platters.

Lacking a plan of any sort with our little pottery choices – me and Sommer chose vases, Emily a mug – I followed Sommer’s advice and went with the dots. But not as vehemently as she did.

Mine got decidedly more jungle (think giraffe – yeah, that happened). Emily stayed classy; think Monet, Van Gogh.

These two gals really helped balance out my college years. Like their art works this weekend, Emily was always very calm, steady, a rock among the chaos. Sommer, a bit more zany like me, kept me company on late nights infused with sugary snacks to get us through the workload. Our freak-outs would almost always lead to hysterical laughter.

In hindsight, we probably should have cut back on the sugar. But oh the times we had.

You can’t always keep all of your friends with you as time moves forward and you along with it. But the ones who do move with you make all the difference.

We get to see the finished creations this weekend after they’ve been fired and glazed. (Is that even the right terminology? I have no idea, but it sounded good in my head.) Not really sure if my “vision”  will be what I imagined, but that’s half the fun anyway, right?

Feeling creative yourself? We had a great time at this little pottery studio, and I would definitely recommend it: Arts on Fire Studio

You can do everything from your own Monet and Van Gogh interpretations, to adult-appropriate finger painting. Then again, it saddens me to think that finger painting is ever not adult appropriate.

(Also, no money was acquired in the making of this endorsement. Just keepin’ it real for ya’.)