My maternity leave ended and on April 17 I returned to work. I live in a different city and now my boys go to a home day care. My day looks like this – Up at 5 and get ready, eat, kids up dressed and out the door by 6. Drop off at daycare (they eat breakfast there) then my 45-50 minute commute to work. I get to work around 7:15 and my days pass very quickly thankfully (pretty busy) and home I go at 3:15. Pick up the kids and get home around 4:30-4:45. Get dinner ready, eat and get ready to go for a run (Tu, W, Th, Sa, Su). When I get back, I get the kids clothes ready for the next day, pack their breakfast and my lunch maybe do some dishes and go to bed. Exhausting! And I only work 3 days a week. My days off are spent tidying my house that gets neglected while I am working. So naturally my sewing has been taking a seat on the back burner. My hats go off to all mothers – to mothers that work full time with young children and mostly to all the single mothers out there. You are all amazing. This is one tough job!
Tragedy in Boston
Today I do not have very much to say. I am so saddened to hear of the tragedy that happened at the Boston Marathon. Such a wonderful event ruined by such tragedy. My heart and thoughts go out to all those affected.
The blocks are coming
We are on the final round of the quilting bee and it is my round. I have requested my block to be the garden fence block. I just love the look of this block and the whole quilt when it comes together. I am using these blocks to make another quilt for my kids. Not too long ago I did the easy quilt in a local sewing class (see post here) for my older son. This one will be for the baby. They share a room so the colour scheme will be the same. I requested only that the colours be orange, dark blue and grey and that no feminine fabrics (as it is for my boys) be used. The combinations I left up to the girls and I provided all the white fabric so that matching the whites would not be an issue. Today I just received my 3rd set of blocks and thought I would do a quick post to share.
And here is a picture of the blocks together. I am waiting for one more set of blocks before I will decide what colours to make my additional blocks. I am thinking of making a set of solid orange and solid blue to go along with the solid greys. What do you think you would pick if you were me?
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4 Blocks for the Bee
I had posted my works in progress about 2 weeks ago. On that list were some quilting blocks that I had to do for a quilting bee I am a part of. The finished quilt is being donated to the BC Children’s Hospital. This quilt project came together through a forum I am a part of. One of the members had a baby (had 3 babies actually) all born prematurely and all 3 passed away. This member has been through such heart break that I would never wish for any one to have to experience and yet she seems so strong. A true inspiration. One of the ladies that is a part of the small quilting bee I am doing made the suggestion to do this quilt to honour the memory of the babies and many people stepped up to contribute. These 4 blocks I put together were so quick and easy, mostly because all fabric was already cut when I received it in the mail so all I had to do was sew it together. I finished it all in less that half an hour and can’t wait to see what the finished quilt will look like.
Off to the Races – Automatic Personal Best
Today was a good day! Today I ran my first road race ever! I participated in the Around the Bay 5K in Hamilton, Ontario. I posted a little about it here. The race started at 9:45 and I was totally ready for it as I had been running 5K for a few weeks since I completed my C25K program.
Chip timer on my shoe and ready to go!
I had great support going into this race. My husband and 2 kids came. My mother in law and father in law and my sister in law all got up bright and early to come out and cheer for me 
All ready to run
So my goal for this race was to finish in under 35 minutes. I was planning to take it slow and steady. The excitement of all the other runners around me though had me going at a bit of a quicker pace time than I would have if I were alone. By the time I got to the 1K marker it was under 6 minutes. This is quick for me. I just started running in January. My plan was to run the race straight through. I took the opportunity to take a couple pics when going up a hill. It was so cool to see the street full of runners.
Well I ended up pushing myself to the point that I had to take 2 quick walk/water breaks. Those breaks gave me a good boost though and I finished the race with my automatic personal best time (the beauty of a first race is it is automatically your best time). My chip time was 30:53.3 wow!! I was 34/149 for my age category and 379/1343 of all women in the race. I am pretty proud of myself!!
Medal for finishing
I kind of feel like I set my bar too high though,lol. This was awesome!!! It was so cool to see the people along the streets cheering everyone on. Some had nice signs. What a great feeling. The best part was the free massages afterwards. Just what my legs needed. First runner in from the 30k race was a man at 1:35:44 FAST age 20-24. I think his pace was like 3:11, crazy!!
So now as I type this out my legs are pretty sore. Not as sore as they were earlier though as I had them massaged, I have done lots of stretching throughout the day and I have been massaging them myself with my electric hand held massager. I did buy a few things that all runners need and have made a world of difference to my stretching routines and that is the foam roller and the yoga strap. These 2 things are amazing for getting deep stretches and the foam roller acts like a deep tissue massage.
So now my husband is inspired and wants to start up running. We are going to the Running Room tomorrow to sign up for their training programs. The hubby is looking to take it easy with the Learn to Run program and I am thinking about the 10K program. I will do a couple more 5K’s with a goal of completing a 10K later in the year.
So in the end I have my bib, my medal and my shoes to remind me of my first race.
And I can not wait to get to my next race!
Are you a runner? Do you have any races coming up? Do you have a favorite race? I love to hear from you so please share your comments
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Fabric in the mail
Just a quick post to share a little something I got in the mail today.
I haven’t read through the instruction yet but since there are 4 different “red” based fabrics I assume I have 4 blocks to make. These blocks will then be sent back as part of another quilting bee I am participating in. The finished quilt will be donated to BC Children’s Hospital. More to come when I get these blocks done
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Meet my Machine
Erin at Sew at Home Mummy and Stacey at The Tilted Quilt are hosting a blog hop. Pop on over to their sites to see the full list of the scheduled blogs. The topic? Meet my sewing machine. This is a great way to find out about a whole bunch of different machines and what people like about them or a feature they wish their machine had. To add to all the great scheduled blogs, Stacey is also hosting a linky party at her site for the week. So feel free to read up and write up your own blog post to link up and share with everyone. This is what I am doing.
So, meet my machine
I have only been sewing since May of last year. I have absolutely zero previous experience. I started off by making some cloth wipes on my sister in laws machine and decided that having 2 small children, besides sewing as a hobby, I would be able to make use of a machine of my own. So I started to look around and check reviews. I knew that I didn’t want the cheapest ones you can buy at Walmart but at the same time I was not really ready to make a large investment as I wanted to be sure about sewing as a hobby before making that decision. I decided to settle on this Kenmore from Sears. I think this machine is a great machine for a beginner that is just not ready to spend the big buck on a fancier machine. Since this is a pretty basic machine I would say that my fave feature is the needle threader. I also like that it came with a hard cover. I bought this machine when it was on sale for $100 off so it was a pretty good deal.
Now that it has been almost a year since I started sewing I have started to eye up new machines. Truth be told, I WISH I had an embroidery machine. I went to a sewing and craft show recently and got to see all brands on display and working their magic. I wrote a blog post about it here. So if I could pick any machine right now I would choose the Husqvarna Topaz 30.
My sewing space occupies a nook up on our second floor. It is a perfect space for my needs at this time. My kids have their bedroom up there and also a separate play room. My table is a table I bought at Ikea, the ones where you buy the table top and then pick the legs you want. Above my table I have a floating shelf. Behind me I have 2 Ikea Expedit shelves. The 2 shelving units are not all for my sewing supplies though, I have to share with “office” stuff.
I don’t have a huge stash of fabric but what I do have is folded neatly on the shelves. You can see a bit of the orange peeking out. Scraps I keep in the black bins on the same shelving unit. I suppose I would like a bigger space and I would definitely like a big separate cutting table but this works for me just fine.
Well that is enough about me, my machine and my space now let’s here all about you. Don’t forget to share your post and link up here.
