Random November Happenings + My Birthday + 5K Race

Here are pictures from the first week of November:

Nov. 1

I signed Ian and Elisa up for an after-school theater class. The play this year was Rapunzel. Ian landed the role of one of the Stabbington brothers, who was named Ben in this adapted play. For the play, we were to provide the costumes. Elisa's Rapunzel costume was easy to find, but there wasn't a costume for one of the Stabbington brothers. Even though there wasn't an exact costume for Ben, it wasn't anything too hard to recreate: brown boots, brown pants, and a forest-green shirt. Ian wore Elisa's boots, borrowed some brown pants from a friend, and I had to make the green shirt. And the gauntlets, too. The gauntlets were pretty quick to sew up. The shirt would have been, had I not ordered flannel-backed vinyl. I spent more time separating the flannel from the vinyl than I did actually sewing the shirt. Otherwise, the shirt would have been too stiff. Ian loved the costume and wore it as much as he could. I added a few of my belts to complete the look.

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Erik thinks Gabe might have ADHD inattentive, but I think it sounds like a normal boy to me. We are getting him tested at the Serin Center and will receive the results in January.

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Nov. 2, my birthday. Another year older. Yay. 

Ian made me a special gift with his Halloween candy.

Elisa acted like a goof with the roborock vacuum box.

I got spoiled with gifts and a yummy cake from Erik. 

Nov. 4

A few days later, Grandma and Grandpa came down (not for my birthday, but to see the kid's play) and were able to watch the kids while Erik and I went out to dinner and a restaurant located in a hotel, A Different Pointe of View. Despite the good reviews, we were highly unimpressed with it. The meal started out well enough with an attentive, polite waiter and some yummy bread with 3 different types of butter. Unfortunately, BOTH of our meals were too salty. Not just a little salty, but mouth-puckering, joint-swelling, eye-wateringly salty. I can't believe nobody else has said anything in the reviews about how salty the food at that place is. To top off a bad meal, we were asked to leave by a rude when we were just taking pictures on the balcony--one of the main attractions of the restaurant is the view, and we couldn't even get a picture. Ok, well I got one of Erik before we were told to exit. How stupid. Needless to say, we will not go back and will discourage anyone from going.

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Nov. 4

Ian went on a field trip to the Phoenix Zoo. His first official field trip! It looks like he had lots of fun, his teacher uploaded some pictures of the trip on the ClassDojo app and this was the only picture that showed all of Ian's face.

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Nov. 4

I found this cute kitty print in Alaska and thought it would make cute pjs for Elisa, but she decided that she "doesn't like cats", so I made some pjs for Aaliayah (for her Christmas gift) instead. I should have bought another yard or two, but I made it work. I hope Aaliyah likes them!

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The Run2Serve 5k/10k race was up and running (haha) again this year. I signed myself, Elisa, and Ian up for the race. Elisa was a brat and refused to go. I should have just brought Ian with me so he could hang out with his friend, Edmond, while he waited for me, but Grandpa agreed to take him. 

The race wasn't my best. I started getting tired the last mile. By the end, I was slightly nauseous and dizzy. Even though I can easily do 3.1 miles on the treadmill, it wasn't enough for a 5K outside. Or rather, not similar enough to the terrain thus I was improperly trained. Good to know for the next 5K! The last time I ran this 5K, I did practice running outside quite a bit before the actual race. This year, I was lazy and figured treadmill was good enough. Judging by my time and how I felt towards the end, it wasn't!  Therefore, I actually did worse than I did two years ago. Darn. Still better than my first time though. There was no one to greet me at the finish line. Erik had to work and Monica, who signed up with me, was still running her 10K, so I don't have any pictures of me running. Grandpa was still on his way with Ian.  My time was 33:42.

Ian ran his little fun run (1K) around 9. Silly boy finished 2nd to last. He started off really fast, though! His friend was the first to finish. Makes sense, since his mom signed up for the 10K and got 2nd place. I think Ian had fun in any case.

Lining up

Go Ian, go!

Here he comes!

Grandpa took some really hideous pictures of me, this was the best of the lot.

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Nov. 6

My friend Monica (same one who participated in Run2Serve with me) gave me her leftover fall fabric scraps (and some batting!) from which I made this table runner. I also used some of my own Thanksgiving/turkey fabric I had found at Walmart a few years ago for $1. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There is one wonky part, but it isn't too noticeable. I was especially happy that it fit my entry way table perfectly, without me measuring!

 

Patriotic Quilt

Patriotic Quilt

Started: September 19

Finished: October 16

Here it is, my second quilt!  Quilting has a vast and fascinating history and is still an art form that is still going strong to this day, so it is gratifying for me to take part in it. This quilt was a gargantuan project that took be a full solid month to complete.  A friend down the street gave me a bagful of patriotic fabric and a huge spool of Riley Blake chevron fabric. So, it seemed to me an obvious choice to make a quilt out of the fabric. I really wanted to incorporate the USA map, sort of like I did in my wall hanging, but with patriotic colors. Since I sort of had my own design in mind, I didn't end up following any pattern, despite a friend printing a few patriotic quilt patterns out for me to use. The fact that I didn't follow any pattern certainly added time on to an already lengthy pattern, but I couldn't help but to follow the "vision" I had in my head. It was definitely ambitious of me (maybe a little too much?) but overall, I'm pleased with the final result.
Even though I was given most of the fabric, the quilt was not exactly free. I did have to buy some solids and of course the batting and clear thread. Still, significantly cheaper than if I had to go out and buy all that printed fabric! I ordered the white fabric with little stars all over it from JoAnn's. I thought it would be perfect for the project, but unfortunately it was very thin and the stars, when punctured, showed tiny dark holes.
Posted here are the pictures of my quilt-making process. If I had to break it down, I would say a quarter of my time was spent deciding the composition and what size to cut the fabric pieces so that it all fit nicely, another quarter spent making pinwheel squares, another on unpicking my many silly mistakes, and the last third was spent on the actual quilting. I have described here my process of making this quilt with pictures, I find pictures explain a hundred times better than words can!

The "putting together" process:

 

I enlisted this cutie to help me. She drew out the states on the white fabric with a water-soluble marker, so that I would know exactly where to place each state when the time came.

I cut out each and every state from the paper...

....and then used that paper shape to cut each state using the various patriotic prints I had. I didn't use Heat 'n Bond like I did the last USA map I used (I didn't want a stiff quilt), but I did use plenty of starch!

Using a tight zig-zag stitch, I sewed each state on along its perimeter. This step didn't take too long and went smoothly. At least relative to the rest of the quilt!

All sewed on!

Adding the border

At this point, I had to decide which way I wanted the map to face. Even though it would have been easier (probably) to have the length of the map along the length of the quilt, I really, really wanted it to be placed so one could easily see it when the quilt was laying on the bed without having to tilt their head to the side.

I had to pause to clean the craftroom before I went any further with the quilt. Look, it has a floor!

Deciding on the layout with the double pinwheel blocks. I sewed way, way too many of them. I overestimated how many I would need. I still have enough left over for another small quilt. Whoops. Probably an entire day wasted on making those blocks, but oh well. While making the blocks, I was actually worried that I didn't have enough fabric for the blocks! I was very close to buying more of the red, but thankfully I didn't. I found the double pinwheel block pattern free of the internet somewhere.

Stitching the letters of the "FREE" on. Unfortunately, I had to later unpick this word since I wanted it blue instead of red.

Sewing strips of red and blue onto the double pinwheel blocks 

I didn't take a picture, but I used freezer paper transfer for the words "land of" and "because of". I would have been more careful to make the words a little straighter, if I could do it all over again.

I tried to make the back of the blocks as neat as the front.

I felt like there was too much red in the quilt. So as an afterthought, I remedied that by adding narrow strips of dark blue in order to break up the red. I made strips of blued, folded and ironed them so that the raw ends were hidden, and sewed them over the top. I'm not sure it's a real quilting technique, but that's what I did. 

Ok, got my layout the way I wanted it...but why is one word red and the other blue? I felt like they should match, plus I wanted to have less red. So I unpicked the red "FREE", cut a new blue one, and stitched it back on. It was a pain in the rear, but it had to be done.

Final layout! Now, I just needed to quilt it.  "Just". Ha! By the time I got to this step, I had been working on the quilt for just over two weeks. Another two weeks, and the quilt would be done!

The actual quilting process:

To start, I "stitched in the ditch" starting from the center out to get those straight lines set in. I didn't get a picture of all the quilting I did, but most was done with clear thread on the machine. I sewed along the squares around the stars, and along the blue strips, I machine-stitched a basic diamond (which was large zig-zags going both directions). I used a template for that part, which I made out of cardboard to ensure all the diamonds were exactly even. For the pinwheel blocks, I sewed around the triangle, which ended up looking sort of neat because it made the triangles around it "pop" up. 

 I really wanted to employ hand stitching into the quilt. Maybe because I wanted to experience a "traditional" quilting technique for once. At first, I didn't bother to hide my stitch "jumps" on the back, and it just looked awful. I almost tore it all out, but then I proceeded to finish the rest (I was hand stitching only along the red striped areas) the proper way, thus I felt better about the whole hand stitching part. I did end up revisiting my initial, messed-up hand stitching and fixing the "jumps" by cutting, knotting, and pushing it back into the fabric so that the thread would be hidden where I had to jump. 

One of my favorite parts of making this quilt was learning how to free-form quilt. Over the states, I used clear thread to make random patterns, otherwise known as the "meandering" quilt stitching.

I used more free-form quilting on the white part around the map and around the letters. I had so much fun on this step. I would go as far as to say it was addicting. Oddly, I had sore elbows after doing this step. I've never in my life had sore elbows before! After doing this, I can see why quilting gloves are needed. I could have used more traction whilst moving the fabric around, and perhaps the gloves would have prevented my sore elbows. Also, I wonder if I should have drawn out the stars with my water-soluble marker so that they look more like stars and not demented starfish, but then again, I kind of like the stars being whimsical.

Finally finished:

All finished! Not perfectly perfect, but I like it.  

The quilt in action...this cutie wanted to give the quilt a try!

 

Halloweening, 2021

Here are the pictures of some fun Halloween activities the kids were able to participate in:

October 29--Ian had his class Halloween party. Ian's teacher sent me some. He got to pick out a pumpkin and decorate it. It looks like he had lots more fun in the classroom playing games and eating treats. I guess Gabe and Elisa are too old for class parties, but at least Ian got to experience some Halloween fun! 

I was afraid those overalls would give him trouble...looks like they did!

Ian with some girls, not sure why haha.

Ian (and Elisa) enjoying the party spoils he brought home from school.

Ian made a cute Luigi! I made the overalls to fit Gabe last, but they were too long yet too tight for Ian this year, haha. Who knows, maybe he'll slim down for next year and he can be Luigi for Trick-or-Treating.

Later that evening, trying on his Yoshi costume hours early for the ward Trunk-or-treat. It hardly fit him and gave him a little wedgie but he didn't seem to mind!

Such a cute Yoshi!

Later that evening--Ward Trunk-or-Treat/Halloween Party:

A cute picture of the kids

Gabe and his friend, Max. Gabe doesn't have very many church friends so it was nice that he could bring Max. I think Max definitely won the award for the most hilarious costume!

And I definitely won the award for the scariest. I wasn't going to dress up but then changed my mind at the last minute and decided to don my old goth costume. Then I got a black eyeline pencil and couldn't stop...I did my eyebrows much thicker than I normally do, lined my lips in black, and used a very pale shade of foundation. I think what was most convincing of my scariness was the black charcoal toothpaste I'd rub over my teeth every so often, as to make myself look super freaky. No one even recognized me lol, it was great scaring kids. 

 

Elisa and her new bff Lily. 

Ian using his Yoshi head as a table for his hot dog plate

Ian is such a ham!

The cutest scarecrow there ever was....

Ian and his friend James

More hamin' it up for Ian

Trick-or-Treating, October 31st: 

Bowser and Yoshi, an adorable pair. Gabe was Bowser a few years back, I'm surprised he was able to squeeze himself into the pants, but he made it work lol

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Erik helped the kids carve some pumpkins. Elisa chose the bee on the left, and on the right looks like a deformed bat at first, but actually it is a one-up mushroom from Super Mario Bros.

Elisa went off trick-or-treating with her friends, while I took the boys around

Trick-or-Treating at a random house. It's really hard to get any good trick-or-treating pictures since it's so dark out.

This one house at a collection of really freaky, creepy animatronic ghouls and such. It didn't seem to faze Ian at all!

Ian's Halloween spoils

Gabe's Halloween spoils. He came home early, and I thought he was done, but then somehow he found his friend Max and he went out to get even more candy.