And Day 23 Happened

I really had good intentions when starting my count down. It doesn’t help that I’ve been sick for 2 weeks. The first week the illness was in my head and I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the second week I had literally lost my voice. That’s the first time that ever happened like that. My voice is finally coming back after 9 days without it.

I just have to shake this illness completely before the 15th of June or I won’t be able to see my folks.

On the creative front, we did go to Maker Faire in San Mateo last weekend. It was somewhat fun with a 3 1/2 year old, but she is going through this obsessive compulsive phase where all she wants to do is the same thing over and over again. It made it hard to actually find new things to do.

We also hit the Exploratorium in San Francisco last weekend which was also cool. Emily loved it and it was really hard to get her to leave. I wish they had an Exploratorium Mini Museum that could contain about 20 activities and would be designed for the parents that want to leave after 2 hours with a 3 year old. That place seriously just went on and on and on. Its amazing that the whole thing is built on a pier.

Between the illness and short little family vaca up to the Bay Area, I have been working on rewriting my bra book. Not the whole thing, just 3 chapters of it. The measurements, the drafting and the grading chapters. I’m excited to finally get this second edition written.

Our summer camps are to begin in 7 days from today. I’m excited to do some new activities with the kids. We will be testing out several projects next Saturday so we can properly teach them. We also have our first radio ad going on the airways starting today. I sure hope it helps keep our summer busy.

We still have lots of prep work for our school. Since I’ve been sick, I haven’t had a chance to film our training sessions, so we are about 2 weeks behind on those, but I hope to catch up this coming week before camps start. I still have about 18 classes to write, so my summer is bound to be a busy one.

I must go get my second cup of coffee now, so until my next update, have a great week.

I think I should be on Day 35

Yeah, this experiment is failing miserably. I had a headache for the last 2 days and its finally gone, but now I have a sore throat. I sure hope I kick this in the next 2 days before my mini-vacation to the Bay Area.

I fixed 2 dying sports bras yesterday by replacing the elastic. Yay- a second chance at life. I stretched them out when I was pregnant and really just didn’t want to toss something that was fixable. I also made an adjustment to some new bras that the underwires were poking me in the back. Yeah- I said the wires were poking me in the back. Its a little ridiculous.

I know I have big ladies, but please- wires do not need to support my back anymore than they need to support my neck. I seam ripped the underwire channeling off about half way around the cup and reattached it where it should be. Now I just need to find a wire that will fit in it. I tried the 50, but it was a little short. I will try the 52 and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just cut down the wire I took out of it to fit.

Adjusting strap placement

In this sample we are moving the strap placement.

Step 1: Draw in your seam allowance at 1/4″

Step 2: Take your two patterns pieces and overlap the seam line and tape down.

Step 3: Use the french ruler and reshape the strap position

Step 4: Cut off change and tape down to the new position.

Step 5: Separate the two pattern pieces.

38 Days Until I’m 40

I have had a pretty busy weekend, but I am feeling quite accomplished. I finally sat down to work on my pattern book. Anywho, it actually motivated me to work on the second edition update of my bra book. And I mean I was motivated. I completely rewrote the last 3 chapters of the book.

Why the last 3 chapters you ask? They are the grading chapters and I have been working tirelessly on bra grading for a client, so I have perfected my directions and wanted to tackle those first. I still need to add the computer grading directions from my software, but that shouldn’t take too long.

I still want to work on some other rewrites in the book, mainly the cup drafting and the introduction chapter, but the rest will remain the same. I am glad I finally sat down to do it. I have really been dreading working on my books for a really long time. I really have no idea why I have been dreading it, but I have. It wasn’t that bad to get back into, so I’m hoping this is just the beginning of me writing again.

Perhaps this writing/creative challenge I have given myself is helping me out. I guess its kind of like exercise, you dread it until you actually start doing it, then its cake. Hmmm, speaking of cake, I would really like a slice. Maybe the corner store has some. I’ll go investigate.

Days 41, 40 and 39

Trying to write something daily is virtually impossible for me. I really just lack the time. Between being a mom and running a business, I barely have time to brush my hair, let alone take 30 minutes from my day to write or do something creative. But I am trying!

Emily had a Mother’s Day/Father’s Day performance with her class on Friday. It was her first performance. She was super cute. She was in the Farmer and the Dell skit and was the dog. I had to make her the brown pants for her costume because they don’t sell brown pants this time of the year.

Once she was on stage, I noticed she was also wearing the scrap skirt I made for her (which was not part of the costume). I think she just loves that I made her stuff and wanted to show it off. I wore my scrap skirt yesterday too, so she was even more excited that we were matching.

I had planned to take the last few hours of Friday to do some stuff for myself, but we got our big shipment from China so that became my focus for the day. This weekend I may try to get back to reupholstering my round chair. Its just been sitting downstairs for almost 3 years wanting me to work on it. Perhaps this is the weekend it will happen.

Creative Day 42 of 45

If you are looking at the dates, you are probably noticing they aren’t really on the days they are supposed to be on. I worked my brain pretty hard yesterday doing some pattern grading on some bras. It was pretty intense to the point that I couldn’t speak in sentences that made sense.

I did accomplish something I had been striving for – finding a pattern in grading that I can take to other projects and then write updated directions for my bra book. I’ve learned a fair amount about bras since I wrote my book so I am planning on releasing a second edition fairly soon.

Luckily I already updated the book for the previous set of changes I made, I now just have to sit down and update the grading portion. Oh what fun, I say sarcastically. As for creative challenges for yesterday, I’d say that the pattern grading was it. It was humoring the mathematical OCD part of my brain.

My 3rd Day and Day 43

I actually did creative stuff on the 43rd day, but I was so exhausted when I got home I just passed out. I made myself and my daughter skirts from our huge box of scrap fabrics. I am having difficulty posting pictures on here as my husband has locked down my site and WordPress specifically.

That’s a programmer for you, that and the 25 character alpha numeric password he throws on everything. I plan to figure out the posting pictures thing and update all of these creative posts with them.

Yesterday was actually a pretty productive day. I had an employee call out sick, but I had created a to do list for her and for myself and lets just say I completed her list as well as most of mine. That explains my exhaustion I suppose. I’ll keep this one short as I need to finish drinking my coffee.

44 Days to Count Down

Today marks the second day towards my creative countdown. Today is also Mother’s Day. Today is 44 days until I turn 40.

I wanted to celebrate this day of motherhood by just hanging out on the couch with my daughter. I wanted to introduce her to Goonies. She lost interest after about 35 minutes, which was also the length of time it took her to eat her popcorn. I didn’t get to spend the day with her in my lap, but she is becoming a big girl and doesn’t need mommy all the time anymore.

I enjoyed Goonies on my own. I have watched it so many times that I don’t really need to watch it to watch it. I actually inspected the DVD before putting in the player and wondered if it would play at all. It is so scratched up. I think it spent a year on and off sitting on top of the DVD player and being played repeatedly.

I just hope that one day Emily will have the same appreciation as I do in that movie. It’s fantasy and innocence and heroism and hope all wrapped up into a tiny little DVD.

My creativity today is just writing, as my original goal in today was to touch up my grey roots and add purple tips to my hair. Lets just say neither worked. The dye burned my scalp so I removed it after 20 minutes, so now my roots are “creatively” splotchy grey and the purple, you ask? Well that looks grey too. Needless to say today’s dye job was a fail in my books. I normally get a dye at the health food store, but I went to Sally’s and picked the no ammonia professional dyes. I’ll probably be redoing it in the morning to hopefully get the grey. I might try the purple again, but I used most of the bottle and am pretty much unimpressed.

Anyway, that’s my day. Dinner is almost ready and the chocolate lava cake(s) in the freezer has my name all over it.

45 Creative Things in 45 Days

A friend from high school decided to write 90 stories in 90 days, leading up to her 40th Birthday. I love the idea as it being a journey into the 40s. I decided I could make an effort to bring my creativity back to life by doing something similar.

90 days is a long time, and heck, I’m going to be 40 in 45 days, so lets do this thing, but do it my way. I haven’t written anything creative in a long time. In fact, I barely do anything creative anymore.

I actually had to write it on my “to do” list this last week for me to make something for myself. Did it happen? Not really, but I did make a big fake fur covered floor pillow for my daughter at the store. It kind of counts. It was a creative used of an old foam mattress. I hate to throw things away that could be re-purposed or reused, so I took our old foam mattress and re-cut out the cushions for the couch I reupholstered, then used the last bit for this floor pillow.

My daughter loved it. She jumped up and down on it just like she does on our bed. She even pulled up a step stool to climb on it just like uses to climb on our bed. She didn’t need it, she was just being silly.

What I had really wanted to do was take a box of silk scraps and make a gown with it. I will put it on next weeks schedule, so maybe I’ll get a chance to do it. Isn’t that a little sad, I have to schedule my creativity.

I always seem to find an excuse to do something business related in my spare time and not actually do something for myself. I’m actually quite disappointed with myself that I haven’t been the creative self I have always been. Motherhood kind of changed my focus, then business took over my focus, then I just plain forgot to make time to do it.

Here is my pledge:

Over the next 45 days, I will post something daily – whether its just writing about life, maybe a short story, a cool project I have completed or just some fun stuff I do with my family.