You can’t tell this from the photo here, but this entire piece was painted in about 15 minutes, with big brush strokes and free hand lines. It is based on an example Joy had already done in the store, with the same fast strokes and simple design. This was painted by my sister who is very “big picture”, who follows the 80% rule to the letter (or fraction), and who moves so fast sometimes she forgets (or doesn’t know how) to slow down.

This sugar bowl (bottom right) is intricate and detailed, and took about 1.5 hours to paint (after 45 min of reading through all the idea books to find just the right example). It was painted by my sister who approaches things methodically, who is the best houseguest because she leaves the house cleaner when she leaves than when she arrived (she voluntarily scrubs grout with a toothbrush), who was once told by a boss that it took her longer to do her job than he expected – but that he didn’t care because she did the job better than he expected.

And this is me. I began the process of painting this platter with the MomsOutLoud logo – which meant I had Joy enlarge a logo and print it out for me to trace it onto the plate – but soon got busy with other things for the evening. What does this say about me? Well, you could say my dreams are bigger than what I can execute. Or you could say I am a good prioritizer, and it was more important for me to meet people and make sure they were having a good time that evening than to paint. I choose to believe the latter – and in fact, have now formally commissioned Joy to paint the platter for me, which demonstrates my belief in surrounding yourself with others who possess different talents.

Just like MomsOutLoud, in fact. The premise is that all moms have something unique to share, something special to give back to the Moms community at large. I just know my personal gift to give is NOT pottery painting.