Happy Holidays – 2021!

Welcome to our first digital holiday letter. In effort to reduce our carbon footprint, we have opted to create this website to share our annual holiday cheer. This way we can reach more of our friends and family and you’ll have one less card to throw away in January. Don’t worry, those who are not digitally inclined will be getting a paper card but they won’t be getting the nifty extras that we can do here.

Our year started with taking delivery of a 40′ Conex (shipping container) to use as storage for the business. Pottery, and the associated support supplies of doing shows, ends up taking up a lot of space. Turns out a Conex is way more affordable than a shed and since we created a parking pad last year, we had the perfect place to put it.

It took a bit of elbow grease and several months, the Conex was transformed into viable storage for the business. All of the surface rust had to scraped, wire-brushed, and then treated – inside and out – before it could be painted. The roof was coated in a flexible, reflective sealant. We found a great way to build shelves on the closed end that didn’t require any drilling of the Conex and Greg did an awesome job of making them happen. And he found a way to hang LED shop lights from ceiling – now to run the power!

After looking for a replacement travel trailer for many months, this spring we bought the Black Pearl – a 2015 Travel Star Galaxy by StarCraft. While we are not sure if this will be our ‘forever’ RV or not, it has suited us well enough this year. For the ‘shakedown’ run we stayed at Belle Isle Park, a beautiful state park in Lancaster, VA. Our next outing with the Black Pearl was a bit longer, as it was our ‘home-away-from-home’ during the run of the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Greg did some awesome modifications to the unit including a fold-down counter extension for the kitchen, replacing the bed platform so that it would accommodate a queen-sized mattress, and putting in a wall to separate the basement from the under-bed storage.

This year our ‘home’ improvement project was focused on the Tessem Stoneware booth at the Maryland Renaissance Faire. We’d been plotting to add a back deck to use for cooking and we made it happen over the summer. Thankfully we had a wonderful group of friends with mad carpentry skills turn out to help us with the construction, and it turned out beautifully. The new deck has plenty of shade from the afternoon sun, and offers a lot more room to prepare meals.

With the majority of Anna’s shows cancelled again this year, we were waiting to hear whether or not the Maryland Renaissance Faire would be held and after a lot of careful consideration, management made the decision that the show would go on. Of course, things looked a bit different this season (masks were strictly enforced in the booth, crowd size was reduced, etc.) but folks came and bought pottery. A lot of pottery; giving both potters their best MDRF season ever. But most importantly no one got sick.

Duchess and Brodie managed to stay out of trouble for the most part this year with no backyard escapes. At 13, Duchess is starting to show her age more and more but she never misses a meal. Brodie, who turned 8 this summer, still acts like a puppy most days.

Best wishes for a cheerful holiday season and a fabulous New Year!

Anna Marie & Gregory