Bovine Themed Dairy Product Container

This whole wedding registry thing is pretty interesting. I vary back and forth between obsessively checking the list to see if something else got bought yet, and feeling horribly greedy and trying to pretend that it isn't really me asking for monogrammed beer mugs or a $190-dollar picnic set (since removed).

It's also interesting seeing who buys what, we've already been told we're weird for not picking vastly overpriced china place settings and opting more for cookware and random "grown up" things like table linens and serving bowls. One aunt decided she wanted to get us something much more fancy and made us pick a crystal decanter and glasses to go with. Although I know the gifts aren't really the point, it is sort of nice to get some high-end kitchen stuff to balance out the money we're spending on throwing the wedding. With the credit card balance we're currently chipping away at we certainly can't afford to buy ourselves an anodized nonstick frying pan and a cow creamer! That was one of the combinations that came up actually, one person combined salad bowl with salad servers, one combined healthy cookbook with a fabulous giant stew pot and my bachelor uncle picked a fry pan and a cow-shaped cream jug.

There is family significance to the cow creamer thing. I promise. I had been secretly hoping my Dad would get me a cow creamer, I think I even mentioned it to my parents, but they may have forgotten in the chaos of packing and getting their asses to California without forgetting the borrowed kilt and sporran for my Dad. Leaving behind a collection of over two hundred cow creamers and cow-themed butter/cheese dishes. Bovine Themed Dairy Product Containers. My Dad's quirkiest quirk, it gives him something specific to search for at antiques fairs, only he never realized how many there were out there until he started to look, and buy, and then he discovered e-Bay and it was all down a gently rolling dairy-country hillside from there.

There are a lot of very attractive models, ranging from Delft blue patterns to realistic markings and gilded horns. My Dad repairs the chipped horns and ears with putty and gold leaf. I'm particularly fond of the black and white Frisian ones with the udders carefully painted pink, they remind me of the tiny plastic toy farm animals I had as a kid. One striking model was made by the sculptor husband of one of his students, it looks a little like the brahma bull from India, with a cat perched on it's shoulders to represent one of my parents' two cats. A fairly plain looking brown cow has had aluminium-foil wings added, so that she can grace the Christmas tree every year (though not as the fairy on top, just somewhere on the tree).

Then there's the nightmare cows: Big bulging cartoon eyes with painted eyelashes. Purple polkadots and disembodied heads, oversized udders, pouty red lipsticky lips (to go with their false eyelashes) and some really scary colour combinations. The scariest so far is one of the disembodied heads, a large cheese dish consisting of the head resting on a matching plate. Only the face has been painted up like a crazy tribal drag queen cow and is large enough for a person to use as a face mask. Not that I've chased Matt around holding the dish/mask up to my face and mooing. I wouldn't do anything like that. Twice.

I don't plan to attempt to emulate my father's collection, but I'm really looking forward to having a nice understated plain white cow creamer in my china cabinet to remind me of it's numerous demented cousins in my parents' house in Scotland.