speed workouts

Wednesday nights, here I come! Tonight I headed back to the track (indoor now) for a speed workout. I went to all of one of these before the Indy half. I'm now committed to going at least every other week, maybe every week for a while if possible. Speed workouts are hard, but great training. Plus, our coaches are two of my favorite people.

Today marked another milestone too--I recommitted to the Team to run the Disney Marathon. The new countdown is until January 11, 2009!! In large part I was able to recommit due to your support. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who responded to my call for support last week for donations. I met the minimum that I needed to continue training, and surpassed it even! Thank you so much. I'm kicking the fundraising campaign into high gear from here on out. I've started contacting local organizations, businesses, and planning events to raise funds. I will keep you posted on my progress. Again, thank you so much to everyone who has helped!

ch-ch-ch-changes, and I'm crazy

I was encouraged today by my friends Lisa and Dorie to feel like I can use this space to blog about my crafts projects and the rest of life. I never have because originally this blog was devoted to training and fundraising for my first race. But life has gone on and I'm realizing that this would probably be more interesting for everyone involved if I widened the scope. So here I am.

First though, an update on running. This past Saturday I ran 3.7 miles!! I wasn't sure I would make it that distance, since my longest run before that had been 2.8. The weather was in my favor, which helped, and I was feeling good. I'm starting to feel like maybe I can do this again. But I'm also crazy. I'm going to attempt to run the Disney Marathon in January. I'm working with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training again. This time around I will need to raise over $3,000! Be warned that there will be lots of fundraising in the months to come! So, wish me luck. I might be crazy to try this. All of a sudden, the Indy Half in October has become a training run. I'm really excited about Indy, but still intimidated about Disney. I might just be crazy, but I'm going to give it a try.

In other news, yesterday was Elliot's two month well-baby check-up. It went really well. He weighs 11lb. 11oz. and measured 22.5 inches. He got his immunizations, screaming as all babies do. I planned to feed him right after the shots, which soothed him a lot. After he finished eating he had forgotten the pain. I think the day wore him out though. Last night he slept better than ever. He slept from 11pm to 4:10am, then from 4:40 until almost 9am. It was so nice to get so much sleep!

On the scrapbooking front, I discovered something nifty a few days ago. Some background: a while back my friend N gave me a white pigment ink pad. We both thought it would be great to stamp white shapes onto colored paper. Not so much. Turns out the ink fades about 90% when it dries on regular paper. So for a while I wasn't sure what I could do with my white ink pad. Over the weekend N and I were scrapbooking together. We came up with a layout that involved a printed vellum background page. Unfortunately, I had only one sheet of the printed vellum and I needed two for the two-page spread. I went to the local crafts stores but couldn't find another sheet. On a whim, I tried to "paint" a pattern onto plain vellum using q-tips and the ink from ink pads. I tried a few colors of ink on a test strip to see which looked the best. Much to my surprise, the white ink works beautifully when applied to vellum. Here's a picture of the result. And yes, I'm just now getting around to scrapbooking my 2005 wedding.