Mamavation Monday: The Unwind Edition
I’m going to change the way I do the Mamavation posts a bit. I’m going to start with a how I did, what I learned and what is my plan first, then I’ll address the Mamavation question of the week. I’m hoping this will help me document the inconsistency issues I have when it comes to working out and eating healthy. Once the information is in front of me I think it will be easier to find a way around it. Here’s hoping.
This last week I only worked out once. I can’t tell you what happened last week that I only worked out once. I was more mindful of what I ate but I have yet to weigh myself and figure out where I ended up last week. This morning I got up and worked out first thing in the morning. It felt great and I feel ready to conquer my day. Even if my day IS starting at almost 9 am. That’s a big one for me. Maybe this is something left over from my Mary Kay days, but I feel like I need to join the 5 ’0 clock club to be productive. The issue with that is by 7pm I am exhausted and when on some nights I don’t get out of class until 10pm I can’t be exhausted at 7pm and be successful. I’m not sure why I feel I have to get up early. I just do. I feel like if my day doesn’t START until 8 or 9 am I’m a slacker- although I am admittedly much more productive at night after the kids have gone to bed. I have time to do yoga, homework and work on any customer projects and work on my business in general. Hmmm…. this is something to think about.
What I’ve learned. I love to do yoga at night. It calms my mind, allows me to stretch out the day (good or bad), do a little reflection and just be. I also like to do cardio and strength training in the morning. It gets my blood moving and helps me feel energized and ready to conquer the day. My plan this week, (since I am doing the 2 week challenge) is to do the Mamavation workouts in the morning. If I get up between 6 and 7 this should help me feel like less of a slacker and is much more realistic than my dreams of joining the 5 ‘o clock club. I will also do yoga at night to help me re-focus and get on with my day. Since I have to do modifications to the Mamavation workout due to my shoulder injury, on the upper body days I will do my physical therapy exercises and do the c25k to make sure I am still getting moving.
Why the unwind edition? I wanted to share with you my favorite way to de-stress. I love doing yoga. The breathing exercises are a sort of meditative quality to it that allows me to just relax. I can sort out ongoing issues, focus on my body, how it feels, the alignment of the poses. Yoga forces me to just be present in the moment. I am forced to listen to my body, where with cardio and strength training I may be tempted to push it a bit. It helps to calm my mind and the stretches feel so good. It’s a good way to end the day and re-energize for the next day. When I am stressed I am often tempted to do yoga just to get a clear mind. I’m currently working on the Crunch – Candlelight Yoga
What is your favorite way to relax?
Fan Pick- Gen Art and Crest Competition Submission
Of course I would post that I am going to post two to three times a day to catch up and then my entire site goes down! That is just the kind of luck that I am having lately. Currently the store is entirely down, but the blog part of the site and email is back up and running. I have spent the last 24 hours trying to make sure that happens. Hopefully tomorrow I will get EVERYTHING back up and running- including the new store front.
Since NYFW is currently going on and the Gen Art/ Crest 3D fashion design winners have officially been announced I can now go ahead and share with you what my submission looked like. I couldn’t share it before because the submission had to include unpublished work and since the web is a form of publishing, I couldn’t post it until the winners were announced and shown. So, here it is. My grande submission.
This was a really difficult submission for me. First, the collection was supposed to be made of only white. IF you chose to use other colors, they had to be silver/grey, purple or blue. No other colors allowed. I tried my best to stick with the white palette as much as possible and try to use either print or texture to create interest. It was rough. I did end up going with silver for a very basic tunic, but otherwise I was able to stick to the white color palette.
This was good for me really. It forced me to design in a way that I never would have on my own. I’m not really a fan of one color collections. I LOVE color! But this forced me to stick with one color and still stay true to my design aesthetic. It was tough and there were countless days where I stared at a blank piece of paper trying to pick a direction to go in. Overall, I am very happy with the submission and I plan on creating a few of these looks for the store. I can’t tell you which ones yet because I may end up using some of them in the upcoming California CC Fashion Symposium (yes, it is that time again). Until I find out whether I got in, you will have to just wonder which ones will become available in the store later.
I do welcome any suggestions, so if you see one here that you would really like to see in real life please don’t hesitate to comment below or send me an email.
Thanks for all your support!
~KR
TFE Files: I Want to Sew Edition
First I am going to apologize. I’m a little behind in the blogging schedule but there is so much I want to share with you guys! I’m going to post two or three posts a day until I catch up. After that it will be back to the normal 3x a week or so. There is so much going on now with the line development, some limited edition stuff I’ll be doing and just life in general. Now… on to this week’s TFE Files.
Addy has wanted to sew for a while now. She’s been hanging out in the sewing room watching the MIL and I sew projects since she was about 18 months old. The older she gets, the more involved in the sewing process she wants to be. Just before she turned 2, I got her the Singer Chain ZigZag Machine. It’s been nothing but a toy for her. She takes Michele and my scraps of fabrics, places them in the machine and usually states something about sewing a skirt for her sister. She has a small craft iron that we don’t plug in that she uses to pretend she is ironing while I iron shirts for the Hubs and the FIL or while Michele and I are ironing different phases of our projects. Occasionally Michele will let her help pin patterns and fabric, to which she tells me it usually doesn’t need to be replaced. She’s trying to get more and more involved in the process. She’s been a bit frustrated with me because I won’t let her get involved (for safety reasons) and so she has now just started doing things on her own. That’s a bit scary to me and doesn’t exactly help me sleep well at night. I’ve done some research and a lot of people suggest not introducing sewing until they are 6 or 8. I don’t think Addy will sit tight for two years until I am ready to teach her to sew.
After looking on the blogosphere for other suggestions I found a woman who taught her daughter to sew a simple skirt at 5 and another who was sewing at 3 and practically pattern drafting by the time she was 6 (I think). These women sew a lot and their daughters have grown up around the sewing machine and watched the sewing process countless times, much like Addy. While the women who taught their daughters to sew at such a young age are the exception and not the rule, I like HOW they taught their daughters and have decided that I am going to do the same with Addy.
Here are the guidelines that we are working with:
Something easy/simple/ made for beginning sewers
Something she wants to sew in order to hold her interest through the project
Let her pick out the fabric/ materials for the project so it is truly hers, not mine
So I took her to JoAnns (I know I said I would never go there again, but sometimes it is a convenience factor). They have an entire wall dedicated to easy and low-cost patterns. Finding a suitable sewing machine without shelling out a lot of dough was a difficult process (I may share that in another post). Now if I can figure out how to attach the finger guard to the machine she can start sewing. Having all the materials to make the dress but being unable to do it has made Adeline MORE IMPATIENT about sewing. We will keep you posted on our first sewing adventure together.
Mamavation Monday: Getting My Shoes On Edition
Hi Ladies!
Sorry for the late post. Classwork was sorta crazy this week and I wanted to make sure I was prepared for everything before I started on the blog again. This week I just wanted to share a few things with you. I know we recently finished the 2 week challenge, and while I did not participate everyday as I would have liked it did get me thinking about moving my body everyday. Since starting the 2 week challenge, I have re-injured my shoulders (a repeat of an injury I got back in September) however, this time, instead of putting myself on the injured list I am working on still moving. I’m currently trying to find other ways to move that won’t further injure my shoulders. So… I may not be able to do a cobra yoga pose, or a yoga push-up (or any push-up for that matter) but I can get on the treadmill and walk for thirty minutes. I can do a lower body workout similar to the one used for Beginners in the Mamavation 2 Week Challenge.
At the end of the 2 Week Challenge I was up two pounds than I was before I started. This has been really frustrating for me, especially since I have been trying to keep track of what I eat. At the end of the day I am eating without being hungry just to make sure I get at least 1200 calories a day and I don’t end up putting my body into starvation mode. I’m not sure why there is weight GAIN, but I’ll just try moving more.
I’ve seen the tweet by @MrBookieboo stating that there is another 2 week challenge coming up on Feb. 13th. I plan on signing up and seeing if there is a way that I can make it through all the workouts this time.
There was a point in the Mamavation 2 Week Challenge where it got really easy for me to use the excuse that I had too much to do and couldn’t afford the TIME to workout. I couldn’t spare the 30 minutes or so. Then my SIL told me that the hardest part about working out is getting your shoes on. Usually after you get your workout shoes on you are committed to going through with it. That sorta stuck with me and so now when I don’t want to get moving I tell myself that the hardest part is getting my shoes on. It doesn’t seem like such a huge task after that. So that’s what I leave you with this week. The hardest part of working out, is getting your shoes on. 
Good luck and have a great workout this week!
With love,
~KR
TFE Files: Addy’s Dance Recital
This is a post I’ve been wanting to do for awhile but kept putting it off. It just seemed like so much work to get the photos, the video, etc, etc and put it all together. Sorry! Here it finally is!
Back in December Addy had her first dance recital. She’s been taking dance lessons for a year now, the dance studio has done a couple of recitals already, but I wanted to wait until I knew that Addy was paying attention in class and actually learning something before I was willing to fork out the money for a dance costume, tickets, pictures, etc. Dance recitals are expensive! No way was I going to spend $60 on a costume that she was only going to wear once and to have her either a) stand there and stare at everyone or b) cry and be discouraged. Sorry- just not gonna do it. I don’t feel like I would be getting my money’s worth in that case. Besides, I want Addy to ENJOY dance, I want her to do it for the FUN of it and the added bonuses of learning to make friends and take direction from an authority figure. I don’t want to be that mom that feels the need to put my child out there in front of everyone so that I can live vicariously through my child or instill the idea that she has to win and be perfect at everything she does (she does this enough on her own, poor child).
The recital was great! It was enjoyable to watch all the little dancers and see some of them finally come out of their shell or others who just…
Enough said. This little girl is the niece of Addy’s dance instructor. She is a very sweet little girl and is always excited and happy in her dance class. There was no way to know that this is how she would react on stage. Too funny…
Here is Addy’s dance class. I thought they were one of the best, but I am biased.
Here are some photos from some of the other classes as well. They were all so cute!
We were so proud of her, and more importantly she was very proud of herself. She was very excited to get her own flowers with a mini Hello Kitty balloon, and as you can tell by the pictures her little sis was very proud of her too!
Addy’s class tapped to “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”. Video is below.
