coordinate + craft + clay: filipino party decorations and ponderings about black clay

The last big birthday party I remembered was when I turned 7. My family was in Puerto Rico, and my parents had invited lots of people. My dad grilled, of course. Vintage photographs show that my parents had also thrown me a party when I was a toddler. I realize at the age of 59 that the parties were likely for both my mother and me as we shared the same birthday. Doh! Feeling sad, nostalgic and a bit floored and selfish that I never honored my mom with a birthday party and because I'm turning 60 next next month, I decided in honor of my parents to coordinate and cook for another birthday party. Birthday invitation has been sent, I've talked with a manager at a Filipino restaurant about what party platters to serve for a buffet dinner in the condo clubhouse. I would love to have it at the restaurant upstairs which can accommodate 30 people, but parking near Avenida is a pain.               

I also tried Avenida's happy hour to sip a pandan rum-based Old Fashioned and preview the food a bit. I really liked the fried tofu with red onion and soy vinegar dipping sauce. 

For the party, I'll be cooking my own recipe for adobo and borrowing a rice cooker as well as renting a snow cone machine to have shaved ice for a halo halo bar.

I’m decorating too which is my favorite thing ever, but I’m keeping the celebration simple and the budget modest. Bamboo plates and utensil ware in ceramic crocks (I hate plastic), kraft paper to cover the tables. No balloons or streamers. Fresh flowers galore inside vases, where one can't see the bottom of the stems. The glass vases will be on reserve in case guests actually do read the invitation and gift me with fresh flowers. I’m in beast mode with making flower bottles and bowls to decorate my party.

In going through my stash of clays at school, where I found and started hydrating a bag of red clay, I found an Aardvark bag of really dark clay labeled with my name and CHAR. I'm guessing and hoping it's their charcoal, medium grit body with no issues of bloating. I'd always loved Rae Dunn's work with black clay. 

I've been looking at ceramicists' processes with black clay (slab and coil and use a metal rib for smoothing) and images of black pots too. I like this pot.

And the other night in a very crowded studio, I painted porcelain slip on these greenware Dixon Sculpture pots... 

One had already been bisqued, and so I glazed it with Majolica. I'm hoping the other two pots have already been bisque fired and that I can overglaze them with the studio's bone white satin this week.