Many years ago, my Mom helped Alyson and I create a special gift for Dad.
We went to Color Me Mine, a chain of shops for the commercial buying and painting of porcelain goods ranging from dinnerware to sculptures of robots and dragons that are put through a kiln on-site.
In my experience it’s a popular suburban activity for kids with vague creative aspirations and too much energy to burn. The Rochlin family has made its fair share of goods there, which is another subject I may have to circle back to one day.
All those years ago, Aly and I made Dad a mug with our little baby handprints on it.
The gift was very well received and used for years. But… That mug in the Featured Image isn’t the original piece.
That first mug actually broke through a heartbreaking turn of events.
So in 2005, we made him a replacement mug:
The 2005 mug continues to be used and has held together relatively well over nearly 15 years.
But now it’s starting to crack.
That mortality was the subject of a recent joke from Dad which got our gears turning. We figured it would be as good a time as any to continue this family tradition by making him a new handprint mug for Father’s Day.
Here we are last Wednesday getting our hands all dirty.
Unfortunately the idea was a bit spur of the moment, so the mug wasn’t finished in time for us to hand it off before all the Grandpa Joe and pasta-making stuff happened.
I was able to pivot our time out into a fun little Tweet about Jamba Juice. It was meant to simply cover our tracks, but a few days later grew into something more.
Yeah.
Shout out to that social media person for having a bit of fun with us. I’m usually cynical about that kind of brand interaction, but it’s kind of cool to actually see it happen.
Today we were finally able to pick up the mug — and a little more Jamba Juice, but I didn’t want to push my luck by grasping desperately for further social media clout.
Here are the fruits of our labor:
The end product is perhaps messier overall, but that’s what happens when you decide to color everything instead of leaving a large portion of the body white.
Personally I think the brushstrokes are indicative of the energy we put in.
Even if I’m less enamored with my handprint, because at this point it’s big enough that I struggled to fit the whole thing.
But that said I hope Dad will be happy with the gift.
Because you know. He’s not home from work at the time that I’m writing this. So I don’t actually know how he’s going to react. And I’ll be telling him not to read this until he gets home later.
It’s like you all get to be in on a little secret. Hopefully you enjoyed the brief glimpse at part of my family history!
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 