An Afternoon with Granddaughter

Granddaughter at The Mad Potter for starts

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These are finished pottery

of various customers,

waiting to be picked up at

The Mad Potter

in Houston, Texas.

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That's were we all went with GC#4

on Saturday to help her celebrate.

She was nine years old earlier in the month.

. Here they are,

It's Billy, GC#4, and Karen!

Those are empty work stations and

pottery to be painted and fired behind them.

. The Mad Potter calls it

"paint by numbers"

That is for people who use the

standard 48 different colors furnished.

Or bring your own or mix and match theirs.

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Simply draw your pattern,

figure out your color scheme,

and order the colors by number.

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After it your work is finished leave it for

five days or so, then come pick up the finished pottery.

The Mad Potter will do the firing in their kilns.

.GC#4 decorated a nice plate for her collection,

Karen did a food bowl for Amber,

Mimi (Mrs. Jim) found three table markers, and

Billy painted a mug to match GC#4's plate.

.This is the store front, in a strip mall

on West Gray Street in Houston.

Isn't it attractive?

. There is a similar pottery painting

place in Saint Remy de Provence, France.

Only they call theirs a Ceramic Cafe'.

It is called Biscuit & Biscuit,

I did a blog about them on April 19. (link).

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Biscuit & Biscuit has a store front

location in the back of the La Fontaine building

on the next street over.

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These buildings are older than any

civilized building presently being used in North America.

Aren't they well preserved?

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Mrs. Jim worked hard on painting

her table markers.

They will be used when the laidies

come here to play bridge or when

our domino** groups play at our house.

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At dominoes, the goal is to get

to table number one

and stay there.

One loss sends you back to table No. three.

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We didn't get to meet the owner,

but she had a really nice write-up

in the Houston Business Journal.
So far she has opened at three

Houston locations.

Her Web site is (link).

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. The Mad Potter brochure

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...

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And St. Remy's Biscuit & Biscuit

(front and back sides).

At Biscuit & Biscuit there are all kinds of

nice drinks. Our favorite is to have

coffee or tea with cookies.

I had a nice current scone with my coffee.

And used the Internet for a very

economical price.

When you go to Saint Remy in Provence, France,

please visit the Biscuit & Biscuit;

say hello to the owner/operators, Jill and Joy.


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When eveyone was finished, GC#4,

Billy, and Karen

left in their new Prius.

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That was just about a day in itself. But not with they younger set.

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Next was and the Alamo Drafthouse. That is a movie house where the chair rows are separated by tables in front of each seat. The menu had drinks (even beer), pizza, and sandwiches. I had a 'western' chicken sandwich, Mrs. Jim shared a pizza with Karen.

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GC#4? She and her friend who came along had French fries and Cokes. The two girls and Billy shared two pitchers of Coke. We forgot about that or the three of us could have had at least one pitcher of Diet Coke for about the same price as the two glasses we had.

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I forgot, there was a movie. It was Over the Hedge, an atrocious animated animal action film. If it wins an Oscar it will be for the animation, not the script. Famous actors did the voice track. William Schatner (alias Denny Crane-link), high on my list, did the Possum character script.

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The Houston Chronicle critique, Amy Briancolli, disagreed. She gave it three and a half stars out of five [The best thing from DreamWorks since Shrek--link]. Besides Shatner, there were Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Nick Nolte, Avril Lavigne, and a host of others doing the voice work.

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After the movie we visited for a while. Yesterday they had birthday cake at their home. Karen said GC#4 "made her own chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and then lots of chocolate frosting for decorations.... A great sugar rush! She decorated it all by herself!"

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This blog is running a little late today, sorry midwesterners. You must be hiding from the rains and doing blogging. I will have a lot to read. Blogger was slow this morning doing pictures, that didn't help.

DAILY STATUS REPORT:

Health check--blood pressure/heart rate 127/64/57 . . . . 1:55 P.M.
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To Do--Pay bills, blog, work on cleanup from taxes, vacation, etc

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**The game's formal name is forty-two. This game is played with double six dominoes, it is very common in Texas.

For the rules and playing strategy, buy the book, Texas 42. The rules and order information are on-line at (link). We play the for points version.

Update (July, 2009): Biscuit and Biscuit has moved from St. Remy to Marseille, France. This was probably a good move as Marseille is a bigger city so they should have a broader customer base. I wish them the very best with the new facility.

They do have the same Web site, http://biscuitbiscuit.canalblog.com/#go