2 Finishes!!!

Welcome to the weekend everyone!  I have 2 finishes to share you with you today but only one is sewing related, so let's get the personal one out of the way first...

I RAN A HALF MARATHON TODAY!!!!  My race is in a month and I needed to do the whole distance to make sure I was physically and mentally ready for it.  Many training plans never have you run the whole distance since adrenaline and the crowd will push you farther than you think, but that's not how I operate.  I needed to know.  Especially since I've been a little iffy with the training plan I'm "following."  I took off most of the month of December because of Santa Shop/class parties/Christmas so I was huffing and puffing through a 5K a few weeks ago.

So at 11 this morning I set out to run 4 miles/walk 1 mile twice and then finish the last 3.1 miles the best I could.  I tried to prepare like I will on race day with water/gatorade/snacks etc.  The first 4 miles went great.  The second 4 miles had a creeper pull over on the side of the road and watch me run till I turned around and then he drove off.  Gross...   By mile 9 I wanted to quit something fierce, but I wanted to be able to tell Chris I'd run it all.  He does such a good job encouraging me and being proud of me for running and I wanted to be able to tell him I did it.  So I kept on.  I ran and walked the last 3 miles, but my goal for the race is to finish under 3 hours, so when I looked down at my watch and I had like 26 minutes to finish and I was tired but not totally-exhausted-can't-move-tired I tried to run as much as I could.  I finished mile 11 and then walked a little but ran most of the last mile.  And then I ran as fast as I could for the last .25 miles which wasn't fast, but I tried.  I clocked in at 3:00:15.  Boo-freakin-yah! Now I know I can do it and I'm hoping that afore-mentioned adrenaline and crowd will get me through even faster.

I "iced" in my pool so I wouldn't have to sit around with ice packs all over me...Thank goodness I live in Florida!!!

So...on to a sewing finish.  As I mentioned earlier this week, I finished up Hayden's baby quilt a few days ago and wanted to show it off here before I give it to the little miss.

I used Holly's ColorBlock Quilt Pattern and changed up some dimensions to match the fabric I had on hand. Holly's pattern is awesome and very easy to follow.

I quilted the colored sections with a wavy line on my machine stretched out to 58.6 and as wide as it would go (7).  I left the embroidered section alone and just quilted-in-the-ditch around it (except for when my stitching got a little off...)

I had a really bad headache the day I quilted this, so it's less than stellar in a few places, but I'm hoping that my non-crafty friends won't care.  I know Hayden won't.

I would highly recommend Holly's pattern (which I bought with my own money just really like).  It's not only a great quilt on it's own, but is so easy to alter to make it bigger/smaller/fit your fabrics, whatever.  It would be great for novelty prints as well.

I also did finish that secret block, but since I can't show it just yet, we'll just leave that there.

I'm off to put my feet up and rest awhile and drink LOTS and LOTS of water.  Have a great weekend everyone!  We're going to the Medieval Faire tomorrow because Emma wrote an essay in class for it that won an award so we got free tickets to go the day she gets her award.