kristmas stars

last night i needed something to fill the house with christmas-y-ness... these stars seem to do the trick. i made them from christmas cards my granny had received over the years. she had so many i've used them for gift tags on presents this year, and now on these stars.

our first nativity...perfect for our apartment

a friend recently gave us this nativity set. as we have little space in our apartment, i was a bit nervous when she said she had a gift for us. then i saw it...

bicycle krafts

When we started making preparations for Erin's lingerie party there were many things that I put on my own "to do" list that really should have been a "to make" list. The napkins you've already seen, but I just remembered to post the party favors. It was a great excuse for me to practice putting in zippers. All of the fabric was from the heaps of material I got from Granny Winfrey. One purse had orange and gray as the dominant colors, and it made me smile to think that it was the one she probably would have liked best. A few pics of the party favors...

office kraft

I started thinking about gifts to make for my work friends back in august; eye pillows, twisted fabric brooch things, decoupaged pen/pencil jars, baked goods, personalized coffee mugs, etc. I finally, pressured by time and desire to be done with it, decided on diy magnets. I've made these magnets before, and actually have them on our fridge and magnet board, had ordered some from etsy a while back, and realized they would be an easy gift to make and deliver. I started with decorative paper, kind of girlie, then started cutting circles out of some of my favorite magazines. You can see the magnets I ended up giving to the guys in the office. I'm sure they were grateful to dodge the cute green button paper. I tore out pages from magazines that kind of looked Christmas-y, and wrapped the buttons in envelope style. I used the magnets to display the card and gift on my coworkers' filing cabinets. This is a super, super easy craft.

thanksgiving dekor

Dekorating for our first thanksgiving with everyone at my parents' house. Found the tablecloths on clearance at wal-mart and the other directions came from what momma Jan had at the house and what nature provided on the lawn. Next year I'll have to remember to get cups that aren't red!

dekorating find!!

recently found this pillow at berry good buys.... for $1!! slightly cheaper than the original price tag at anthropologie :)

had it dry cleaned, and voila!!

afghan komplete!

i started this afghan in july, got knitter's elbow in august, laid off knitting in september, knit through the world series in october, finished it today! averaging four months to finish a project... not bad.

a weekend of crafting!

the slight pain midway up my back reminds me that a full weekend of crafting might be too much... or is it saying "well done" and "next time sit in a more comfortable chair"??? i vote for the latter. i've been working on crafts for an upcoming brunch... table decor, etc. i adapted a pattern from http://www.purlbee.com/mollys-handmade-napkins/ and ended up with these. i made the binding from some material i got from granny winfrey, which she had already cut, of course... i imagine for some project she had in mind. i tried to use the bias tape maker as seen on the link, but i ended up just folding it myself and ironing it flat. there are some sewing imperfections but the final product turned out cute enough.

filing cabinet makeover

again, next time i'll take before and after pics. this is an old filing cabinet i found at the thrift store for $8. we had planned to put it in our coat closet to do some badly-needed organizing of the important papers, however after the makeover, it was too cute to hide in a closet. i sanded and spray primed. then i spray painted the whole thing white. i added the stencil when the three coats of spray paint were dry. i found the stencil at joann's craft store. this craft: easy, easy and easy.



Button Art!

per erin's request here's the picture of the button art. this was inspired by an article in ReadyMade magazine... this house i really loved that's in dallas. i loved pretty much everything about it... there's color everywhere, which is my favorite! sometimes i think our apartment looks like color threw up in it. :) i've posted the link to another web site, inspired by the same article in ReadyMade. http://curbly.com/apronthriftgirl/posts/8313-how-to-make-a-vintage-button-art-display

here's my version:

decoupaged ART!

and now for the pictures not attached to the last post.... du-nu-nu-NUH!!!!!

you can decoupage anything

well, just about anything. a while back i got on a decoupage kick and nothing in our apartment was safe. everything i looked at had the potential to be transformed by the powers of decoupage. first it was the TV trays i think. then the pencil holder, then the toothbrush holder, then came the magnets, and the jar lids and finally, when i decided that we had enough decoupaged stuff.... framed decoupaged art!!!! 

Convert an old trunk

Inspired by this project we saw in Readymade magazine (http://www.readymade.com/), Ryan and I converted these two army trunks into bedside tables. We got them for $15 each at the flea market and brush painted the insides yellow. We had shelves cut at Home Depot and then had to figure out how to keep the shelves in. The trunks already have holes in the sides (I don't know what for) so we decided to glue pegs in the holes to set the shelves on. Worked ok. The original inspiration, http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/diy-trunk-to-rolling-bar-project-readymade-online-109662 is slightly more fancy, but these serve our purpose.

recycle your magazines, two times!

i flip through magazines as a hobby. i study them. cut out of them. paste pictures into journals. and quite frequently i try to figure out a craft i can do with them before i send them to their final destination, the recycle bin. i've used pictures to decoupage coffee tins, tv trays, magnets, and a toothbrush holder. i've cut out cool pictures and framed them for art. with the magazines that don't have cool ideas and pictures, i cut out big sections of color, which i then decoupage into framed art.

by far the magazine craft that was the most involved was the greeting card... very specific to the recipient. it's not as easy to be creative when i'm not my own target audience. i tore out a magazine page and cut it in half length-wise for the base. i'm not sure what made me think scotch tape would be the best thing to put this craft together, but it seemed to work ok. might choose something less noticeable next time. i think the pictures are from the three different ones that i made but they're sort of hard to tell apart.

is there a minty green phase in my future???

i submit that it's a definite possibility. this lovely green, "mint sprint", called my name at the kroger down the street this evening. i'm certain that the true name of this color is "vespa green". check with me next time sally hansen.

you know, vespa green

about a week ago i purchased an old bedside table and magazine rack at an estate sale. neither were particularly attractive but thanks to the $5 price tag, i went ahead and purchased both and immediately began trying to think where, in our rather small apartment, would i put these two new gems. after moving them around a bit and getting friends to weigh in on the decision, the pair ended up ousting the blue, refinished goodwill-drop-off-site table from the hall, and relegating it to an inferior position in the bedroom. in such a prominent position at the end of the only hall in the house, i knew the redoing of these two pieces couldn't wait. i sanded, primed and and repaired the table, spray painted the magazine rack and headed off to sherwin williams to pick out the perfect color for the new table.

i googled the color first: i tried "70's green", too olive-y, "60's green", too yellow-y, and then i tried "50's green" and it was too... well, just right. when i went to the paint store i tried to describe this green to the paint pro, but he looked at me, puzzled, when i explained that it was "vespa green". didn't seem to help. if only he had let me use his internet machine, i could have shown him this picture:

whatever my description, i think the paint pro got it just about right. here's the finished product! (next time i'll post before pictures so you can see my actual finds, pre sweat and hard work)

learning to sew

after the first summer session ended, i found myself in full-blast craft mode. i picked up a sewing machine from my parents' house, the slinger slant needle 404, and when my mom was staying a few nights with us, she taught me a few things on the machine. thank goodness the instruction manual was still in one of the drawers because when she left i had a little trouble remembering all the steps. my first project, a yellow pillow with the letter "b" on it, did not go well. after a frustrating first hour of trying to shove the material through the machine, uneven stitches and countless knots on the back side of the fabric, i looked back through the manual and realized i didn't have the presser foot down. resulted in a very artsy letter "b".

since the artsy "b" i've made several other pillows, put in three or four zippers, purchased a new machine off craigslist and perfected (well, improved) my pillow-making skills by sewing some pillows for friends; friends who don't mind a curvy seam and a few obvious slip-ups. hopefully soon i'll tackle other sewing projects, a dress perhaps, or a set of napkins :)

easy-to-make bird magnets

thanks to the nifty bird template at paperseed.com http://thepaperseed.com/?cat=35 i now have some cute bird magnets to decorate our mail bin.

the suggestion at paperseed.com is to cut out the same birds in felt. i traced the birds onto posterboard then cut small pieces of color from magazine pages and decoupaged each of the birds. you could also cut the birds out of decorative paper, newspaper, fabric, etc. then cover each of the birds and hot glue a magnet to the back when you're done.

blue pyrex

new blue bowls! $0.50 a piece at an estate sale. take that antique stores! :)

a kraft kollage

evidence that there are many craft posts on their way! this is a collage of most of the crafts that soon will have their very own individual post.

A shift in theme!

with the marathon complete, the focus of this blog has now obviously changed. from now on i'll be posting about my latest craft endeavors, or should i say kraft with a "k". when driving through small towns (i'm sure big towns have it too) have you ever found yourself amazed by the blast of creativity when you see "c" words on signs spelled with a "k"? i know i have. cool is so much cooler when spelled with a "k", and cars, well, a little bit fancier when transformed into "kar". and let us not forget, the even more clever, "k" to substitute "qu", as in kwik. this is not only kool, but also a real time saver. who wants to use two letters when one will do the trick?! ("kw" for "qu" minus the "c" from "ck" -- yep, definitely a time saver).
thus, to honor these clever members of society, i've retitled the blog with a couple of these cute "k-for-c" words; you know, keep the kreative energy flowing. i'll be posting, hopefully more often than before, pics of my craft endeavors.

happy krafting!

20 miles and headed downhill!

Last Saturday Ryan, Lauren and I braved the cold, the rain and the wind to complete our last long run of the training season before the marathon. Tomorrow we will run 12 miles and then the next week, only 6. Supposedly, if you can run 20 miles, you can run 26. We shall see about that. Lauren's sister will be running a few miles with us of the course and as Lauren has run a couple of marathons already, I believe her when she says that we'll be need some encouragment in those last miles. I've asked Jay and my mom to run a few miles with us too because I think it would be fun to have someone else to carry the conversation. Lauren and I talk just about the whole time we run but last week, as we found out, after about 3 hours of running, we'd both run out of things to talk about. In order to take our minds off the last two miles we had to brainstorm topics to talk about so that we wouldn't think about how cold it was getting and how tired our legs were. We finished the 20 miles in just over 3.5 hours so if we run about the same on race day we should finish in around 4.5 hours; that's a whole morning of running. I'd better not think on that too long because it seems crazier and crazier the more I imagine race day.

As we are now finishing up our training, we are also nearing the deadline for fundraising. I'm very close to my goal, which is a really good thing! The deadline for donations is March 31st so if you were thinking about donating, now's the time! The fundraising link is at the top of the blog so scoot on up to the top of the page and click your way over to the fundraising page.

Thanks to all of you who have already donated! We're almost there!!!!!

18! We're almost there!

This past weekend we ran our next to longest run before we actually run the marathon. My training partner Lauren and I ran Sunday afternoon in the rain and at the end we were both surprised by how not terrible we felt. There have been several training runs where we have both felt pretty miserable at the end, but this wasn't one of them.

We trekked through muddy water puddles for just over 3 hours to complete our long run for the week. Our shoes went from dry to damp to drenched to soggy and back to semi-dry again, when we would then inevitably hit another unavoidable puddle.

The first hour of the run yesterday went by very quickly because I talked for the entire hour telling Lauren about the book Three Cups of Tea. I'm guessing it took me an hour to tell her about it because I didn't leave out any details and because I could only get out a few sentences before I had to work to keep my breathing normal. We've decided that maybe we should both try to finish a book before the marathon so we can have 2 hours worth of talking material for the run.

When we finished the run Ryan met us at base and had recovery foods for us to eat while we walked around to stretch out our legs. I really think it's the camaraderie that I enjoy so much about the training. It's fun to get to visit with someone for three hours straight - a pretty captive audience I'd say.

Anywho, just wanted to write to touch base and let everyone know that we're still running.

Don't forget to donate if you had planned on it. If you hadn't planned on it, plan on it :)

(Fundraising link at the top of the blog)

Cancer doesn't stop

On Saturday, the normal day of our long runs that we run together with our team, the cold weather persisted and snow still covered the ground. On Friday night I asked Ryan if we were going to do the team run that next morning and he answered me, as I knew he would, that he would be running the next morning but I could sleep in if I wanted. Just so you know, that trick works on me 100% of the time. Only had he said he wasn't going to run would I have stayed in bed too. When we got up to base right at 7:30 we saw our coach and one of the mentors standing by their cars, still running, waiting to see if anyone was going to show up. To be honest, I was thinking, dang, we are going to be the only ones here and I'd really rather not run 12 miles all by myself.

We visited with Manuel, our coach and the TNT mentor for a few minutes when Manuel asked me how my hands had been doing in the cold. Ever since the dehydration run my hands have had a hard time warming up during the cold day runs. I informed him that my $1 gloves weren't cutting it (surprise, surprise). He walked to his car and pulled out a pair of gloves and said, "try these. I picked them up at a bike store half off and thought maybe they would work better for you." In that instant I was reminded of another reason why I love training with TNT so much. They take care of you. They care about you. And they care about what they're doing.

With my new gloves warming up my already-cold hands, a walk-runner showed up (she's from the North, and she's tough), and one of the other TNT coaches showed up. Manuel informed us that Albert would run with us and I felt relieved that I wouldn't be running alone for two hours.

Every Saturday before we run one of the mentors, the team captain or one of the coaches shares a story to inspire us either about one of our Honored Heroes or about training or about the cause we support. Manuel told us something he had thought of that morning, that you can't choose your race-day weather, so don't choose your training-day weather. While this helped a little to make me ready for the run we were about to start, Albert shared something that tied what we're doing back to the reason why we train. He had been talking to his cousins that morning asking them if they were going to run, and they laughed thinking he couldn't be serious when he told them, "cancer doesn't stop because it's cold." That was enough. I was sufficiently inspired to trek through the snow and complete our long run.

(I was cold at the start, cold in the middle, and cold at the end, but my hands stayed warm pretty much the whole time. :)

Three cups of tea

Right now Ryan and I are reading the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, and it's made me think a lot about what it is to raise money for a cause you support. In the book, based on the experiences Greg Mortenson had raising money for schools in Pakistan, he believed so wholeheartedly in what he was doing that he was determined to raise $12,000, enough money to build one school in a small village, Korphe. He did everything he could think of to raise the money, including writing 580 letters, many of which he typed on a typewriter. He only got one response from his letter campaign, Tom Brokaw, and that was it; hardly enough money to build his school.

Eventually he got in touch with one man, Jean Hoerni, who gave him all the money he needed to build the school. When he got back to Korphe with all the materials for the school the village elders told him what they really needed was a bridge (as it would have been difficult to carry the materials across the Braldu river with a hanging basket on a cable). Mortenson then realized he would have to fundraise again. He was feeling pretty down when he was encouraged by a fellow climber to ask Hoerni again for money, as he definitely had enough to give.

What I've realized from this book (what we've read so far) is that my efforts to fundraise have been pretty puny, and last week as I was beginning to think 'how in the world will we raise enough to meet our goal of $1800 each?' I realized that I really haven't done much yet to fundraise. So, while I'm not going to type 580 letters on a typewriter (I would have to buy a typewriter), I'm going to get creative with ways I can fundraise. So... if any of you who read this blog have ideas/creative ways to fundraise, please share them here! and I'll give them a shot.

Oh and also, if any of you wants to be the Jean Hoerni of my story, go right ahead!

privilege

I just got back from a 6-mile jog and about halfway through, when my feet were falling asleep and my legs felt like sacks of concrete, I realized I was pretty tired and ready to stop. I slowed down a little and tried to let Mariah's voice drown out the thoughts of stopping and not finishing the run. While "doo doo doo dum, yeah, you'll always be my baby" are inspiring words, they weren't enough to take my mind off the fact that I couldn't feel my feet, and at that moment the word 'privilege' popped into my head.

For about the next 15 minutes of the run I thought about what a privilege it is to be able to go outside and run. I know that running isn't for everyone, and it wasn't for me for a while, but for some people, it will never even be an option. Sometimes it's that thought that manages to keep me running. I looked down at my legs and thought how amazing it is that they are able to run for an hour straight.

Somewhere in the midst of my reflection about the privilege it is to be able to run, it dawned on me that I should probably stop to loosen my shoelaces. You'd think this would have occurred to me sooner, but I figure that the exhaustion and weariness were blocking my ability to think clearly. The word 'privilege' got me over the hump today but common sense kept my feet from falling off. The end.

Almost halfway there

Well in mileage at least. On Saturday we ran our first long run of 10 miles and it was nice thinking when I finished that if I doubled what I ran then added 6.2 more miles then I would have run the marathon. Ok so I still have quite a ways to go with training but at least our long runs are over 5 miles now. I remember when we ran a 4-mile long run thinking, how in the world am I ever going to be able to run 10 miles? One thing I like about Team in Training is that the mileage increases pretty gradually so you don't notice a dramatic increase of miles. Now that I'm more confident about the training aspect of the challenge, I have to shift my attention to fundraising.

With fundraising, I am not almost half way there... a pretty good jump away from halfway actually. I've not done much in the way of asking people to donate because, well, that's the hard part. The only thing that makes it easier is the cause.

I was reading some statistics about leukemia and lymphona and the one that really caught my attention was how the survival rate has changed from 1960 to 2005: from 1960 to 1963 the five-year relative survival rate was 14%, and from 1999 to 2005 the five-year relative survival rate was 54%. I know that part of this increase is due to leukemia and lymphona research that is supported by the fundraising done by Team in Training participants. A couple of weeks ago at training one of the TNT staff members informed us that from all Team in Training participants the fundraising total had passed the $1 billion mark.

So, as I continue to train and make sure I'm physically capable of running a marathon, I'm going to turn my attention to asking people for money. If you read all the way to the end of this post I'm sure you are convinced that you too, should be a part of the TNT fundraising. So, I've conveniently posted the link to my fundraising page (it's also posted at the top of the blog) so you can clickety-click your way over to it and donate.

Just think:
if you give up your breakfast today you could donate $5.
if you give up your breakfast and fancy lunch today you could donate $20.
if you give up eating today :) you could donate $30.
(these are just some possibilities I came up with off the tippety-top of my head)

http://pages.teamintraining.org/ntx/bigd10/kwinfreybr

Running in loops

Since Christmas day Ryan and I have been in Sundown spending time with my family. This reprieve from work and normal routine does not include a break from training. The first few days we ran four miles, a pretty good loop around town. Yesterday we ran six and I've realized that, although I prefer to run without repeating any part of the already run trail, Sundown's size forces a runner into looping; the track, the same one-mile loop several times, or a long loop just a few times. We have a long run coming up tomorrow, 8 miles and I'm thinking it might be best to just drive out of town 8 miles and run home. This would be better than looping in circles, right? When you run in circles it's so tempting to stop and not finish the run when you pass by your house with each loop and think, "dang, I'm already here. Why should I keep going?" I'm not sure I'll convince Jay and Ryan that running an 8-mile line would be better than running 8 loops around town, but I think I'd be better at running the 8 miles home instead of running by the house 8 times.

Oh and by the way, it's cold. I've included a picture my mom has taken to illustrate just how cold it has been.