Girl's room

So the kiddos have been asking for their own room. They have been sharing a room since babies but now they would like their own space. On one hand it is hard because we want them to continue to be close and chat at night before going to bed on the other hand I have been antsy to redecorate their room and the guest bedroom/sewing room which has been empty for a while now.

The first step was to sell the futon. Today I made the next step, chosing fabric for their curtains. By chosing the fabric we also settled on a color scheme....

For MEC's room I did have my heart settled on some Annie Selke fabric found at Joann's.

I was going to use both fabric to make a curtain. I was inspired by several posts seen on makeit and loveit blog http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2010/07/decorate-my-home-part-20-gathered-top.html and http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2010/02/decorate-my-home-part-10-gathered.html. After measure the windows I realized that 34$/yard would be a bit costly. The second post reminded me of how much I love Amy Butler's fabric and how daring she is in mixing and matching crazy patterns together.

So after browsing www.fabrics.com site I stumbled upon these fabric from the midwest modern 2 collection.

After consulting Amy Butler's website for ideas of what to use as a second fabric I settled on the following two.

MEC decided on the squiggly... If it is a bit too busy I will order the dots.

With so much colors on the windows we will probably stay pretty simple with the wall color. I'm imagining something off white maybe a tad sandy will be nice.

Once this first part of the project is done, I will probably try to make some comforter cover and some floor pillows.

The other part of this room which is a bit troubling is the big big window onto the first floor of the house. We are currently toying with the idea of a wood shutter that would add privacy to this room without completely removing the appeal of the window. If we were going to go that route we could play with some idea to have a big magnetic board or something.... More to come soon I hope. However in the mean time lots of cleaning up to do and figuring out where to stash the sewing stuff and the remaining books!

To the rescue...

So to help me accomplish my goals of riding 56M at a decent pace in 4 weeks I decided to crawl back to my coach. After a short email exchange I decided that if it was OK with her for me not to race and to keep the training at about 6-8H00 per week I would re-hire her. Frankly 4 months with no Lesley have left me running a 5M at a 12min/miles pace in major pain.

Today from 4:30-6:30pm (not an early riser) was back on the saddle, and 2h00 riding with 4 Torrey Pines hill repeats. I managed 3, didn't do the last one because the back of my knee were painful. Tomorrow morning will be 1:30 mountain biking session and then we are back to a normal training schedule with some running and some biking. I'm giddy with excitement at the challenge. My main goal is to stick to the program as much as possible and do it as long as possible. We will see where it takes me.

I even got new running shoes and then are white and purple!!!! Goody honestly I would have preferred a hot hot pink!

Crazyness

I know I know long time no post... but I have been struggling with the whole posting thing. But here I am again.

Earlier this week I accepted to do something a bit crazy. I signed up for the bike leg of a half ironman. Yup that's right I volunteered to race the 56M of the bike leg of a half ironman in no less than 4 weeks! I'm out of shape because as soon as I stopped training with Lesley well I stopped training and thus I did lose about 99% of the fitness I have been sweating hard to gain over the last year. Today running 1h00 is painful and hard!

So I dusted the cobweb off my trainer, and i put my workout clothe on and well I hoped on the trainer at 8:45pm. I didn't do a hard workout I just did a little spinning at moderate intensity and now I feel GOOD! The joy of working out....

Please if stay tune for more report on that journey. In the meantime I will enjoy my dinner and a glass of wine.

Long week end

Quick recap of our long week end:
Saturday:
- Beach in the morning until I found myself gasping for air when engulfed by the crowds. Beautiful day though and the kids had a great time.
- First movie in the theater with the family: Cars 2 was fun, MEC spent 25% of the movie in her seat, 50% in my lap playing with her air, talking fidgetting and 25% on her dad's lap. MAC loved the movie.
- Dinner was at Brockton Villa since our favorite sushi place was packed (lack of planning on our part :(). Dinner was OK, but service was slow which on a romantic dinner wouldn't matter much but with two kids melting away from hunger not so fun. Menu was ok nothing great. So Blah....
- Ice cream at Hagen Daz

Sunday:
- Finish up project as in shirts for the graduation of MEC from her preschool... I know I'm late.
- Made some bread with unbleached flour yuck!
- Went for 1h00 run at noon wasn't fast it was hot but i went
- Made some mint chocolate chip ice-cream a flavor I really don't like when store bought but of course loved when made with my little hands
- Flaked for our friends kid birthday celebration, but on a lazy sunday socializing with 40 people we didn't know was too much for the introverts we are....
- Impromptu mexican dinner at the neighbors with lots of wine and margaritas staggered home at 11pm

Monday:
- National History museum
- Lazy afternoon doing things around the house
- Grocery shopping
- Baked Banana chocolate chip muffins
- Finished the tee-shirts yay I can go on finishing the rest of the stuff so I can start new stuff.
- Watched Dead-zone I wasn't into it at all but it was quite good.
- Folded laundry yay!

Challenge two weeks later

Well the challenge was up to a rough start and the first week nothing happened. I guess I needed to settle into the new family rhythm. B was sick as well which didn't help.

This week was much much better:

- Sunday was a mountain biking session with B and the neighbor. It was really funny to see the different approach to mountain biking between a woman and a man. Someone told me that woman are wired for self preservation. I was all about trying to keep control of my bike going down hill. Needless to say that I fell because going too slow makes things a bit more unstable.

However I made it to the bottom of the big hill with a huge adreanaline rush.

- Monday was off

- Tuesday was 35min slow run

- Wednesday was 32 min slow run

- Thursday was 1hoo Yoga

- Friday was 45min Master swimming. I never thought I was in any swimming shape. However 4 month without swimming and noodle arm today are telling me that I was indeed in an OK swimming shape.

This week end I'd like to try to go road biking, and running.... We will see where we are!

Next week more running, swimming and yogaing because this puts a smile in my heart!

Challenge

Last week as I was trudging along on my 3M run I decided that I needed to put focus back into my workout life! Yes I am ashamed to admit that as soon as I stopped working with the coach well I stopped working out all together. The only excuse I was able to come up with is that I lost direction, I lost the passion that was driving me. All of sudden I was deflated, racing totally lost its appeal and thus training had no purpose.

I guess this year is the year of finding a new balance. Maybe playing the game "who is Sophie?" is the purpose of my life it sure feels like it most of the time.

This year though has been a bit different, I crossed to the dark side of the 30is.. I know I am not old and gosh I hope I look half as good as most 40+ year old I know but working with people who graduated from high school the year I got married doesn't do much for feeling young!

I think the harder part was to have my daughter leave daycare. A school we have been going to every single day for the past 7 years. Leaving people who saw and took care of both of my kids from 3month old until 5!

So back to my challenge and lack of gusto in training. I decided to try something new. I obviously don't feel like racing these days the mental pressure I put on myself is simply too much. But I thought what about challenging my self to do the following for the next 12 months:

- Monday Yoga/Off

- Tuesday 30-45 min run

- Wednesday 30-45 min run

- Thursday Yoga

- Friday 30-45 min run

- Saturday 1:30-2:00 bike (alternating between road bike and mountain bike)

- Sunday 60-90 min run.

3 weeks on 1 week lighter so on and so forth.

I don't worry about mileage or speed I just want to get out there challenge myself with the terrain and the consistency.

I am only allowed to miss a workout for another workout and only 1 run/week unless sick!

This is my challenge lets see if I can do it.

Today: - 41min run

The other challenge that I think every other woman has is to lose those damned 5-10lbs. I won't bore you with the details but I decided to really try this time...

Tonight I cooked:

- Ono steak which is a Hawaiian fish much like sword fish B cooked it on the BBQ (yes we did have fish tonight)

- Green pea sauce

- Orzo pasta

- Cherries

- 1 glass of white wine.

Now it is time to shower and go read.... Good night

BTW I'm still sewing although I have to move my stuff back downstairs and I need to post on those said projects

quick updates

Finally my crunch time at work is over although it will probably pick up again soon. I had a very nice brain dead relaxing week. I did take some time off work, took the kids off school for an afternoon, caught up with some projects.
Last week end we took the kids camping at Cuyamaca and it was awesome. We slept fairly well the kids did too we woke up at a reasonnable hour of 7:30am.
I want to plan another trip soon but in a relatively more remote area, in other word I want to see less people.
I have started and almost finished a few sewing project and will be posting pictures soon.