Glassblowing Date

Our boxes and the shards of glass we use to color the clear glass.

JD & Terri, December 2010.

Dipping the clear ball into white glass.

Firing the glass to adhere the colors.

JD and super-cool hippie, Ian.

JD and Ian rolling his blue and red glass shards.

Ian blowing the first puff of air into the glass.

JD is inserting air into the ball by blowing into the small tube.

All done and ready to remove!

It was my turn to plan a fun date and I decided to find something I KNEW JD had always wanted to try: Glassblowing. Seems kind of random and out-of-the-box, but definitely something he has always wanted to do.

I was eating my breakfast in December while watching the morning news. Our local news profiled a glass company that was offering the opportunity to make your own Christmas ornament. I called the company and booked me and JD for the next weekend.

We headed to the Pearl District of Portland (all the artsy-fartsy people are there--very trendy) and finally found the building. I hadn't told JD where or what we were doing (which is VERY hard for me because I am not a good secret-keeper). He was thrilled to find out it was glassblowing.

Inside this huge warehouse they had 6 or 8 kilns and loads of beautiful artwork everywhere. They had us put our names on our own square boxes that would house our ornaments and then we picked out our colors. JD went very masculine with blues and greens and I was more chickish with purple and pinks. They both turned out awesome and it was a great date when we finished off with dinner at a Thai restaurant. Kind of a "bucket list" item we checked off that day.

I so enjoy spending time with my best friend. We definitely need to do this more often...