Groovebag

1969

Today is my younger sister, Barbra's 40th birthday.
This is a milestone birthday for many reasons. Some are obvious. Hello! Forty years old!
And some for less obvious reasons.
When Barb was born she was sick. Like really, really sick. Life and death sick.
She was born with a congenital heart defect that caused her heart to develop in a malformed way. She had a hole between her left and right chamber, the two main arteries flowing from her heart were crossed and not delivering blood properly to her lungs. She was one sick little baby. Doctors told my parents that babies born with that type of a heart condition rarely lived past 5 years old.
My parents were told that she was too weak and too young to withstand open heart surgery. That she would have to gain strength to survive the ordeal of the surgery.
So my parents waited for her to get stronger. And then when she was 3 months old she had a stroke. The kind of thing that old people have, so we thought.
Doctor's advised my parents to "put her away", that's what you did back then. My parents were told that she would never walk, or talk or feed herself. That the brain damage from the stroke was too massive for her to lead a "normal" life. That she would be a burden on our family.
My parents ignored that advise and brought her home. Hard times? You bet. But we were a family and we were going to stay that way. I don't ever remember being told to leave her be, because she's handicapped. Or told to help her or do it for her. If anything it was the opposite. "Let her do it herself!"
Barb endured many, many surgeries in her life: open heart surgery twice, pacemaker installed and then battery replacements, brain surgery, orthopedic knee surgery (after a nasty fall and a broken knee).
But today she turned FORTY. Well past the diagnoses of five.
And today she lives a semi independent life in a group home with two other men like herself and a couple of staff members.
And today she is a championship special olympic bowler.

Happy Birthday Barbra.

Sewing up a storm

Now that I have my muse, I have been digging into my fabric stash and doing some sewing.
For my first project I used this Butterick pattern. I loved the retro look of this 1947 style.
  I bought the cheery floral seersucker fabric ages ago at a local shop that has a huge mount of dead stock vintage fabrics. I felt like a kid in a candy store when I first discovered that shop!

The nature of the seersucker made it a bit challenging to work with especially matching the stripes in the fabric. I am pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

And now that the warm summer weather is finally here.....I can wear my lovely new sun dress!

Judy as muse

Everyone seems to get their creative boosts in different ways. For some it is seeing the brightness and explosion of colour in a blooming spring garden. For others it is found in a pile of fresh produce in a local farmer's market. Or maybe in a packed-to-the-rafters fabric store.

I've been looking for my inspiration for a while now as I feel like I've been in a bit of a creative rut. I looked for it in all of the places that I listed above but couldn't  seem to see it.

And then I looked at this.
I bought this adjustable dress form at a church sale about 15 years ago. I've hung on to it even though it never had a stand and I found using it frustrating to use because I would have to sit it on a table or chair to get an idea of how a garment would look on it. To be honest, I had it shoved in the back of a cupboard for the longest time.

Then I got an idea after seeing a video on Threadbanger about making a tape dress form.
I found a Christmas tree stand on Craigslist and bought a length of pipe at the local hardware store and my sweet Contraband rigged it all together with a few scraps of lumber to stablize it.

And voila! I now have a dress stand, or a judy as I am more prone to call it.

And make no mistake about it. I have found my inspiration in my judy. I have been sewing up some new frocks for me, a few items that came my way on contract and looking at refurbishing/repurposing some old chestnuts from my closet.
I'll post the latest creations in the next few days.

It's Coming! It's Coming!

The first international location for Anthropologie opens tomorrow in Toronto at  The Shops of Don Mills.
Maybe I'll celebrate Earth Day by riding my bike up there (it's a bit of a hike from my house) and splurging on a new sundress.......or at least have a glorious look around!

Bite My Cookie

I got an e-mail from Bite My Cookie last week:

clearly this wins cracks. i hope they're as yummy as your contraband. send me your address, please.
xobmc

She left me that comment in reference to this post.

Then today I got the tastiest package in the mail!

I took this photo about 32 seconds after I opened said package.

I will have to exercise enormous restraint and try not to eat the remaining 5 cookies, like, RIGHT NOW!
But you can bet that I am going to lick those crumbs off the plate as I soon as I finish this post.
Damn they are tasty.
Is it wrong that my lunch today was a crack cookie and a cup of tea?

Thank you BMC!

Added note: Bite My Cookie has opened up an Etsy shop here.
Now go get yourself some cookies!

Making Zippy

I started this blog thinking that it would be a good boost for my wee little ETSY shop. But I haven't posted anything relating to my shop!
Yet.
I've been busy making new stock for my shop.
Here is the start of the process.

And mid way through.

And the finished product!

I'll be listing a bunch of these Zippy Cassette Wallets in my shop over the next couple of days.

Baby Steps

I am a runner.
A Marathon runner to be specific.
I ran my first Half Marathon in 2001 and after I crossed the finish line, I thought "that wasn't too bad. Maybe I should try a full marathon".
I ran my first full marathon in Ottawa in 2002. It was a totally different experience than the half marathon. Being double the distance you would expect that but I suppose that you can't really imagine how different and how much harder it would be until you are running the race.
I clearly remember during the race thinking that I would NEVER do this again. That everything hurt. That this was insane.
And lo and behold, as I crossed the finish line, I thought, "that wasn't so bad, maybe I should run another race and try to qualify for the Boston Marathon".
And so I ran another marathon and did qualify for Boston and did run that marathon.
Twice.
The first time was in   2004.
  My Contraband took this picture of me smiling(!?) at mile 21. I'm in the white tank top with Canadian flag on it.
And then I ran it again the following year.

  That's me in the red t-shirt with the Canadian flag on it. My Contraband took this picture as well but it was around mile 24 and I guess I had my game face on, gritting my teeth focusing on finishing.

I have also run The Chicago Marathon.
Twice.
The first time was 2005.

It is one of my favorite race courses. Flat, which means fast, scenic and packed with spectators.

I ran my fastest race there in 2006. In runner speak that is called personal best or PB.
My PB is 3 hours 36 minutes 38 seconds.
And with that as my finishing time I qualified for The New York Marathon which has faster qualifying times than the Boston Marathon, by the way.

So off we went to New York in the fall of 2007.

That's me in the pink shirt and grey shorts. This was taken in Central Park, about 1 mile from the finish. At that point in the race it may as well have been 100 miles from the finish.
I was having a hard time in that race. Harder than usual.
I had developed a wicked side stitch about half way through the race and it stuck with me right up until the end.
Not my idea of a good running companion.
I managed to finish in a respectable time of 3 hours 57 minutes 13 seconds. Not a PB but I could live with that.

So I guess you could say that marathon running is something I enjoy doing.
It's a bit of a painful, grueling enjoyment I suppose.
But for the past year I have been "benched" with an injury.
It was bound to happen.
After chasing around to various health care providers trying to get to the root of the pain in my hip, I was finally diagnosed with bursitis in my right hip.
I started seeing a physiotherapist in September and have been dong my physio therapy religiously.
I want to run again, pain free. Well excluding the given pain of running a marathon!
My physio therapist has been "prescribing" very short, very controlled runs for me.
Walk for 5 minutes, run for 4 minutes, walk for 5 minutes run for 4 minutes. That was what I was allowed to do in one running session.
Hard to hold back the reins when I was used to going out for a run that would last for an hour or longer!
But I followed his directions, and slowly he increased my running distances bit by bit.
All part of the healing of my injury and strengthening muscles to prevent the injury from happening again.
I am now up to a full on, non stop 20 minute run.
That works out to just over 4 kms.
I am thrilled!
So far, I feel no pain and hopefully with continued physio and strength conditioning, I'll be back in full form soon.
But I am well aware that baby steps must be taken before I am up and running full on.
I won't be running any spring races and I'm alright with that.
Instead I have my sights set on some fall races, with my physiotherapist's thumbs up of course.

Bursting With Pictures

Alright, so it's been quite a while since my last post.
But we have been busy busy busy over here finishing up our spectacular bathroom.
And I have gobs of photos to prove it!

 This is looking from the hallway into the bathroom.
I actually found it kind of tricky to find a good angle to take all of these pictures.
I need to learn some tricks from the peeps at all of those home decorating magazines!

We bought this sink at a neighbours yard sale for 30 bucks! Faucet and taps included.

And this cast iron, claw foot tub was rescued from the dump when we happened on it abandoned in another neighbours front yard. After asking their permission, we loaded it into our car and stored it in our backyard.....for 4 years!
We took it to a local bath tub refinishing shop and voila!
My favorite new past time is soaking in this baby.

Our HUGE shower stall with a fantastic rain head shower head.
We found the shower system at a British based company that had unbelievable prices.
Unbelievably low!
We saw a similar looking system at Restoration Hardware that was $4000.00 more than what we paid for ours.
YIKES!

 

We also put a very large built in cupboard to store all sorts of bathroom type things.

 

And this is what it looked like before we got out the sledgehammers and wrecking bars.

So there you have it folks.

I gotta go......soak in the tub!

Naming of Names

It has been brought to my attention that my wonderful Husband doesn't like being referred to as Hubbie or D when I write about him here on this blog.

So, after careful consideration and discussion, I will now refer to him as my Contraband.
That is a combination of the two words CONTRACTOR and HUSBAND.

He is my Husband.

And,lately, he has also been my Contractor as we under go the massive renovations we have been doing on our house for the last 4 years.

I have to give credit for this idea to a writer whose blog I read.
She has a very clever name for her Husband and I was inspired by her wit.

Inching Towards Victory

We have been renovating our main bathroom for the last 3 months.
Just the two of us.
Well, mostly D.
I make sure that he is fed and well caffeinated.
And I help where I can be useful, which truthfully isn't very often.
But I try.

This is what our bathroom looked like when we bought our house 4 years ago.

It was functional, but not very pretty.
The previous owners had done some, ahem, work on it which involved a lot of caulking and some very questionable plumbing.

So we decided to do this.
 

That my friends is a gutted bathroom.

If we had the bathtub installed, I would be soaking in it, instead of lying on the floor wishing I was soaking in it.

A lot of work and sweat has transpired over the last 3 months and we are creeping towards completion. D and I have been tiling for the last few days.
Subway tiles look spectacular.
But man-o-man they are labour intensive to install.
So many little tiles.
So, so many.

But this is how things look right now, this very second.
The toilet will sit in the left in this picture, the pedestal sink in the middle and the cast iron, claw foot bathtub will be on the right.
Look at all of those subway tiles.
Sheesh!

And just look at this lovely, heated, marble floor.
Pure luxury and a fine upgrade from the ugly peel and stick vinyl floor tiles that were on the floor before.

And this is our shower.
It is on the wall opposite the toilet and sink.
And look at all of those subway tiles.
We decided to take a break from the endless tiling in the shower area and focus on getting the tub, sink and toilet installed.

We are nearing the end and with any luck we will be soaking in our beautiful tub this weekend.
A perfect way to spend Valentine's Day if you ask me.