Maya Road and Me

The Race

So growing up, I was definitely more brains that muscle but somewhere deep deep deep in my soul I knew I had an athletic side stuck in the scrawny, mullet head, valedictorian body. I do not come from a family of athletes (perhaps mathletes yes) but athletic ability was not in my genes at least on the outside. But even in middle school and high school, I knew I had some sort of athletic ability I just needed to hone and develop.

I didn't let that stop me. Over many many years, I started working out a lot. It all started in college. I had put on my freshman 15 and it was time to stop worrying about boys, school and my next chemical engineering exam. I started running a lot. I started lifting weights a lot. I started working out to make myself happy, to figure out my life and it changed how I saw myself.

And about 12-13 years ago, when I moved to Dallas, something strange was happening. I started placing in my age group. A couple of times I placed in the top 3 and I even won a race once locally. And this was me - no one who grew up with me would have believed it. I hardly believed it myself. I even came within a couple of minutes of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

But then my kids arrived and the time I spent exercising was spent now on them. My body took a while to recover from them. I never was as fast as I once was and there were times I beat myself over that. 

So this year, I decided I would do a half marathon. It has been well over 5 years since I did one - before my youngest was born. This time I did it with minimal amounts of training but it was a beautiful race. I finished. And while it is no where close to my PR, it was exciting to be an example to my children to see me at the finish and greet me with their hugs and smiles. 

And more than anything, I realize my goals as I approach 40 are not what they once were when I was 30. My priorities has changed. I no longer live to race on Saturdays or train. I have other more important little ones in my life. But I do know I won't be waiting another 5 years before I run a half marathon again. And I cannot wait.

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Halloween Costumes

It has been a while since I made my daughter's Halloween costume. The last time she was only about 7 weeks old and a perfect little nigiri salmon sushi - with just a white onesie, orange pillow, masking tape and a piece of green fleece.

But she was not too happy about it:

This year, I started work on Olivia's costume early! She said she wanted to be an owl. So I used this tutorial and started working on this:

When I was traveling and had some free time to watch TV in the hotel at nights, I clipped out all the feathers and started hand sewing the purple and white fleece onto a sweatshirt she had been gifted.

It took a while but after I was done, I decided to create her also a mask. For that I used this tutorial and then added some of my own design to it to create this:

Olivia loved it. Here she was trying it on for the first time:

A little tu-tu skirt with built in leggings completes the look!

I will share soon some other costumes I have made my son over the years!

Cards

So we just started shipping out our Maya Road Autumn Notes Card Kit. This has been a long process in the making but we finally got it to where we wanted it. I am a child of the Fall and love the beautiful colors in the kit. Here are some of the cards I made with the kit:

I have to say, I found the process of making these cards relaxing. Perhaps it was because I thought of them as mini scrapbook pages just small enough to do in a short while. But I am really happy with how my cards turned out.

My favorite one is this one:

I love the little pocket with the chance to add a gift card or something else in there ;). 

I am so grateful that we are almost sold out of the kits. So if you would like one be sure to grab one while we still have them!

 

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Fall

It has been a busy season for us. With the kids back to school, almost all our show orders shipping from CHA already, planning for the next show is now full speed ahead.

But with that, I have been busy with my kids. This weekend, I taught Noah the art of freezer paper stenciling.

We have been planning this for a while but we finally decided on creating a storm trooper shirt for him. So I started by googling some images of lego storm troopers and was able to create this onto freeze paper:

I used the photo I saw as a guide (it was a stenciled picture) and I sketched it out onto my freezer paper.

Now came the hard part, hand cutting the stencil. You could if you have a machine that cuts, turn your file into something you can cut on your machine but I decided to try hand cutting:

It took a while. I did some cutting between chores and lessons with the kids and I finally got this. And then we took it to Noah's shirt and ironed it on (side note: who was the brillant person who thought to iron their freeze paper that was for storing meat to use as a stencil)?

And I taught Noah how to stipple with a foam brush:

We used a silk screen printing paint and I had NOah practice first on a scrap piece of cloth and freezer paper. I reminded him to use a pouncing motion. I reminded him to be gentle with the cut area that was ironed on and that he would do great.

And here we go!

This one was blurrly but I will have some more after it is dried, ironed and on my boy! Awesomeness!