Muggin' it up

This seemingly random blog post is brought to you by my friend, Sam, who writes over at Chronicles of an Anthropology Nerd. While unloading the dishwasher the other night, a thought came to her that she is hoping to use as the Capstone Project for Grad School and that thought is simply this: That you can tell quite a bit about a person by their mug(s). And so she has started an anthropological study, involving mugs and brief interviews, through her blog and has invited people to share photos and stories about their collections.

You can read more about the project, what inspired it and how you can help Sam out by visiting her blog, here. For my part, I'm hoping some of you will play along and blog about your mug collection because I'm nosy and want to take a peek at what sort of collection everyone else has! ;-)

So now, without further adieu, my mugs! And a brief tidbit about what they mean to me. You'll notice there are quite a few of them, which is funny because I'm the only one who drinks coffee. So these babies are all mine.

We'll start with the least exciting ones and work our way up to my favorites. These ones here, are the 4 I bought to go along with my new dishes. I decided I wanted to brighten up my dinner ware a few months back and so my matte black dishes and mugs were donated and these guys moved in. I like them because they're bright without being overly garish. Also, there are two green ones and not two yellow or red ones because green is my favorite color. I think it's important to note; I never use these.

This set includes a Reindeer who showed up in my Yule stocking from the hubby one year and is a mug I drink tea from pretty regularly. Not coffee though! It's a bit narrow and small, so doesn't hold enough nectar of the gods for my tastes.

The TD mug is from my previous job and I used it all the time while I still worked there, it was inconspicuous sitting in my teller window. ;) Now that I no longer work there, I don't use it.

The Falls Park mug, is a tourist mug from the town in which I currently live. It's my favorite place in the town - a beautiful park with waterfalls and a huge bridge that I've written about before. Oddly enough though, I didn't buy this mug, it was gifted to me at my current job with a local construction company. I don't ever use it.

And now, for my most favorite of my mug collection! You can tell because I shared this photo slightly larger, lol. On the left is a mug I won a few years back during a Valentine's Day giveaway from Dancing with a Spatula Wand (whose writing I miss!). This is another mug that I use almost exclusively for tea drinking; particularly if I'm ill. Something about that cheery green makes me feel better inwardly, even if it doesn't chase the sickness away.

The middle mug is one of those irreplaceable mugs that if something ever happened to it, I'd be inconsolable. There was a time, ten years ago, when I was homeless for a few weeks and sleeping in my car at the local wildlife preserve. (This isn't a well known or publicized fact about me, I usually keep it under pretty tight wraps.) During that time, there weren't many people who knew about it in my friend circle; just my nearest and dearest whose help I refused because I didn't want to explain my shitty family life to their parents. One of them bought me this smiling jack-o-lantern mug after I stared at it, grinning, in the Hallmark store around Halloween and had planned on gifting it to me for Christmas. When shit went down though, I received it early - as a reminder that I wasn't alone, that people cared and to put a smile on my face. As that friendship faded and eventually broke off, those memories have turned bittersweet, but still I used this mug every.single.day for years. I still use it frequently; pretty much every day in the Autumn. It's huge and holds almost 2 cups of coffee at a time, it's a goddamn Jack-O-Lantern and pumpkins are my weakness (seriously, if you want proof of my pumpkin weaknesses see this post and my engagement story.

The last, but certainly not least mug, is the beautiful black and white Bee sketch mug. This was gifted to me this past Yule by my hubster and is my current every day mug. If I'm not drinking iced coffee and it's not Autumn or I'm not in need of a giant smiling face to cheer me up, this is the mug that I use. Bee is a creature that I have a lot of love and respect for and we've had quite a few interactions together. They're very important to me, a fact that hubster knows and actually encourages. (He's helping me get up the confidence to take classes and become a beekeeper.) We were out window shopping one day and I spotted a bunch of mugs in this style; with birds and dragonflies on them. This was the only bee one, but deciding I had enough mugs and was also broke, I walked away from it. I was ecstatic when it appeared under my tree and have had to work very, very hard to keep it white. Something about working with oil pastels near this mug that seems like a bad idea. ;-)

And there you have it! My mug collection. So now, I showed you mine, so I hope you'll show me yours!