The Mug Project

Today's post is in response to Sam Curtin's (over at Chronicles of an Anthropology Nerd ) plea for folks to send her pictures of their mugs. Poor thing doesn't know quite what she's getting in for with me.

That's the bulk (but by no means all) of my mug collection. Once upon a time, when we first moved into this house and that little odds-n-ends basket underneath that rack was neat and barely filled, those mugs hung in a semblance of order instead of in the chaos you see above. Fourteen years later, as mugs got added and kids moved mugs and hooks to suit their preference, well, you can see the result.

Do we use all these mugs? The terrifying answer is yes. It's no secret I'm something of a tea snob drinker. But the hubby has his coffee addiction to manage and my children love their hot chocolate as well as tea sweetened with a generous amount of honey. In the winter time, when we are all reaching for our favorite hot beverage we can go through these fast! It goes even faster if we have company. The motto of this house is that although guests may walk in, they usually need to roll or waddle out. My husband especially takes great delight in stuffing guests full of good food and drink, and I have a plethora of tea, gentle herbal to high test caffeinated, supermarket brand to mail order specialty, so there is no excuse for a guest not to grab from our motley assortment and enjoy a cuppa. It's not unusual in the winter time to have my whole top rack of my dishwasher filled with nothing but mugs (and have perhaps a few mugs on the bottom rack too).

If you look carefully at the picture, you'll see the majority of them are animation themed mugs. I've loved cartoons my whole life. We have Warner Brothers characters Fiesta ware (back from when the WB stores used to carry them). We have animation cels as art in our house. I have several fat coffee table books on the history of animation that I've read through several times. My college answering machine message was me singing a bastardized version of the Tiny Toons Adventures theme song.

I'm a bit obvious with my obsessions.

Moving on - yes, each member of the house has "their" mug - one only they use. First up is my work mug and my favorite home mug.

The Bugs Bunny mug is my cup of choice for home. My dad was the one who instilled my love of cartoons. We'd watch the old Bugs Bunny cartoons together and both crack up over them. He could quote them pretty well too, especially when I was feeling pouty or moody. The Tinkerbell mug, which is my go-to work mug, was a gift from one of my best and oldest friends (I henceforth dub her Oolong). Oolong brought it back from a trip to Disneyworld. My wee stature has been a joke for awhile among my group of friends, and I've been referred to as pixie or fairy every now and again (well, not by those who know faerie lore, but that's another story). She saw this mug and thought of me. It graces my cubicle desk and has made many a meeting much more enjoyable. I'm normally a tea drinker, but sometimes, there's something about being in my office that makes me crave coffee.

This is the back of my work mug. 

Some mornings, I need much larger than my faithful Bugs Bunny mug. This behemoth usually sits to the side and hides my chocolate stash. But on morning when the flow charts are big and the changes are many, I turn to it. This is part of a set of mugs that was a wedding gift from a friend of mine I don't really hear from too often anymore, but I still think of her when I see them.

Note the size comparison to one of my "normal" sized mugs

Next up are my family's favorites. The large tan one is my husband's favorite. He got it from an African import store near a place we vacation at every now and again. The shop is gone now, and the company that originally made the mug now specializes in bead making not mugs, but it's still a nice reminder of one of his favorite places in the world. Plus it holds a generous amount of coffee. The Spiderman mug is my son's. It was a holiday gift to him from a very understanding aunt. Although we're blessed with a close and doting (sometimes too doting) extended family, this one aunt in particular really seems to "get" my son. This mug came with special gourmet hot chocolate she knew he liked. He still reaches for this one, even though that hot chocolate mix was used up a long time ago. The Sailor Moon mug is my daughter's. It was a "just because" gift from her dad to her. While she tends to think that my hubby is the stricter one between the two of us, she hasn't noticed that he has a tendency to spoil her rotten. When she asks me for a sweet, I usually point her to the fruit. When she asks him, they go out for gelato.  Sailor Moon is one of her big obsessions. Like my dad and I with the old Warner Brothers cartoons, it's TV we like to watch together. My husband really doesn't care for Sailor Moon too much (he prefers shonen over shojo anime), but he knew she would love it. She takes her hot chocolate from it regularly.

 The last mug is from the same company that made my husband's mug. I actually use it in ritual, in place of a traditional chalice. Part of the reasoning behind this is the color scheme. To me, the soothing blues and greens really felt perfect to represent the Divine Feminine concept favored by so many Pagans. Also, the fact that it was made by a mother, trying to earn a living wage to support her family (the whole story behind the company is in the link I pasted earlier in this post), made it seem even more appropriate to use as a symbol in my rituals.

So there you have it. My mugs. The song I'm going with for this post is Cups by Anna Kendrick. Yes, I know this is a post about mugs not cups, but my daughter loves this song, so that's what I'm going with.