GW Ladies Night Out Wreath Project

Last night our Ark Builders group at church had a Ladies Night Out event. We enjoyed a meal together at California Pizza Kitchen and then went to the church building for "craft time". We all brought our own supplies to make these wreaths by stringing Christmas ornaments onto a wire clothes hanger. We had a lot of fun and everyone's wreath looked great! It was interesting to see the different ornament selection everyone brought and everyone's unique creative taste.
This is how mine turned out. (I'm so proud of my bow!)

Recent Sewing Projects

Since we've moved I've had more time and space to try more sewing projects. By no means at all am I a master of this craft! But I'm practicing....and I'm very proud of the things that I have made. My mom actually bought the fabric for this pillowcase dress. We were on the same brain wavelength one week. She had seen dresses like this for sale at a consignment shop for $30+, decided to make one, and bought this fabric. That same week, I had ordered a pattern to make "pillowcase" dresses and shirts. We never communicated about our ideas until.....Josie and I went to their house to visit that weekend, and what do you know....she had the fabric and I had the pattern! We put our "projects" together for this dress! It was SUPER easy! We had it cut out and sewn together in 2 hours while Josie took a nap. For my next project, I appliqued Josie a "pumpkin" shirt for the fall.
Since it's football season, she definitely needed an Alabama dress. Roll Tide!!!!
Next, I decided to applique a turkey shirt for Thanksgiving! I was going to make his "feathers" out of ribbons, but I found this fabric and thought it was too cute! Now, moving on to Christmas projects.....

Nashville 1/2 Marathon

This morning I ran my first 1/2 Marathon. It was the Nashville Half Marathon sponsored by Hard Rock Cafe and "I Run for the Party". (There was a block party at the end sponsored by Michelob Light....because everyone feels like downing a beer after running 13.1 miles, I guess. Ha! And no, I didn't have one.) I was really nervous because I did it all by myself. But once I got there and the race got started, I was fine. For the first 8 miles or so, my pace was in the 8:50s. I even passed the 2 hour pace girl (she holds up a sign and runs at a pace to finish in that time). Then our route went out to Shelby Bottoms and mile 9 was coming up out of the park. That hill about killed me. It was awful! So, I had to stop and walk some. Then I was fine until mile 12. The last mile was really hard because I was running into a very gusty wind and I had an EXTREMELY full bladder! (but I didn't want to stop!) Lane and Josie were waiting for me at the finish line. I didn't realize it until the finish line, but a friend from church, Melanie Neal, was right behind me. Her finish time was 2:12. My official time from the results website was 2:10:46 with a pace of 9:59. (Still faster than a 10 min. mile!) However, I honestly don't think the course was mapped correctly. I've been running with my Nike GPS for a while on my IPhone. I've never officially calibrated it, but it's always matched what I clocked with the car and what I mapped out on mapmyrun.com. It says I ran 13.5 miles at a pace of 9:44. I just think that's a big difference. My phone would tell me I'd completed a certain mile long before I could see the mile marker flags. Hmmmmm..... Regardless, I FINISHED and at a somewhat decent time! Based on the results, I was ranked 45th out of 182 in my age bracket (30-34 females).
Will I ever run one again??? We'll see....not any time soon! haha