365 Days Handmade

Making life a better place, one day at a time

Tag Archives: Sean


by Leave a comment

Day 201/365: Borders and Fronts

Over an early dinner of couscous and shrimp salad with sugar snap peas, basil, and cherry tomatoes, I was telling Sean that I still needed to write tonight’s blog post.  I wasn’t sure what to write about.

“You have a lot of borders and fronts sewed,” he said, motioning to the fabric strips draped over the back of one of the dining room chairs.

It took me a few seconds to realize what he meant by “borders and fronts.”  I’d spent the weekend cutting and sewing binding strips, as well as piecing together the nine-patch blocks that I’d shared in yesterday’s blog entry.

“Oh,” I told him, “you mean binding and quilt tops.”

He tapped his finger on the top of the quilted placemat underneath his salad bowl.  “Like I said, borders and fronts.”

* * *

Anyway, I decided not to take photos of the borders and fronts for today’s blog, mostly because I wanted to share a bright outdoor photo rather than an indoor poorly lit one.  So I went outside this evening and took pictures of my birthday angel trumpet plant and the pumpkin seedlings that are no longer seedlings but turning into full-on plants with vines.  They really loved this weekend’s rain and were very happy to soak it up.

7.20.2015A

See, don’t the plants and gnomes make for very cheery photos?

7.20.2015B


by Leave a comment

Day 199/365: Fusion Breakfast with Handmade Placemats

7.18.2015

Sean is the breakfast maker in our household.  He always cooks my eggs exactly the way I like them, over medium.  This morning’s eggs were so pretty that I had to take a picture of them.  As I was framing the shot, it occurred to me that a lot of objects in the photo tell you a lot of things about us.  There are the quilted placemats that I made, along with a luchador cocktail napkin that I sewed.  In the background to the left are an aqua chair that I upcycled (I should post a blog entry with Before and After photos of that project), along with a white side table that I also painted.  And Sean’s t-shirt tells you who he’s supporting in Major League Soccer.

Our meal is also reflective of our backgrounds:  you take a Filipino girl from Hawaii and a Southern boy from Florida, have them living in coastal California for a dozen years, and you’ve got a breakfast of rice, eggs, vegan sausage, and unsweetened iced tea.  Total Hawaiian-Californian-Southern fusion.  And it was good.


by 1 Comment

Day 188/365: Week 6 of Half Marathon Training

I got home from work–10 hours of what is my Monday after a 3-day weekend–and I was fully prepared to camp out on the couch for the rest of the evening.  But, nooooo.  Sean said, “We have to run today.”

“Can’t today be a rest day?” I asked.

“No,” Sean said, “because tomorrow is supposed to be the rest day.”

Drat.  He was going to be disciplined and stick to the half marathon training plan that I’d printed out and stuck to the refrigerator door.

So I changed into my running clothes and put on my running shoes, and we went out for a forty-minute run, according to schedule.  I spent the first half hour alternating between being mad at my husband and trying to distract myself from the various aches and pains that were developing along my hamstrings and shins and the arches of my feet.  I spent the last ten minutes focused on just getting home and putting this run behind me.

Just as it is with every long run that I complete, by the time I got home, I felt pretty good about what I’d accomplished, and I was back to liking my husband again.  Especially since he’d made puttanesca while I was at work, and we would be able to sit down to eat in a matter of minutes.

I didn’t take any photos of our dinner, but here is one from our 4th of July breakfast that Sean made.  My contribution was the handmade quilted placemats and handmade napkins.

7.7.2015

Even though he won’t let me slack off the training schedule, he does make the best breakfast.


by Leave a comment

Day 187/365: Week 3 of Allergy Testing

After last night’s Women’s World Cup game, Sean and I still had to make the 150-mile drive back down to Ventura so that I could make my morning appointment for allergy testing in Oxnard.  I knew that I would be getting shots in the arm this week, but I didn’t realize how many there would be until the nurse came into the room with this tray.

7.6.2015

“Am I getting a shot of each one of those?” I asked her, just to be clear.

“No, only the ones with the brown dots on the caps,” she told me.

Needless to say, it was not a pleasant experience and after about the first five or six shots, I couldn’t help whimpering.  Truthfully, I wanted to cry a little bit, but I told myself that it would be over pretty soon and then there would only be one more day of testing next week.  In case you were curious, I had an allergic reaction to each and every single one of those shots, and when I asked the nurse what they were, she simply replied, “Mold.”

After my appointment, Sean and I had a few errands to run– stuff like going to the credit union and to the post office and getting an oil change for the car– and then we had to drive back up to Morro Bay.  I started knitting a new sock over the weekend and I also did some sewing, but I’ll share those projects with you later, because now I’m wiped out and it’s pretty much time to go to bed.


by Leave a comment

Day 186/365: The Day of the 2015 Women’s World Cup

7.5.2015A

Sean is a huge soccer fan and right now we are waiting for the 2015 Women’s World Cup game between the USA and Japan to start.

7.5.2015B

Earlier for lunch, I made sushi rice and we ate fresh vegetarian hand rolls.

7.5 (1)

Both Sean and I love sushi and Japanese food, but today Sean is a USA fan, through and through.

7.5 (2)

P.S. The table runner is the reverse side of this table runner from this post, and the quilted placemat is this one.

 


by 1 Comment

Day 185/365: Fourth of July

Today Sean and I joined a few hundred people for the Morro Bay 4th of July bike parade.

7.4.2015

The bike parade path is a 1.5 mile stretch that starts north of the Morro Creek Bridge across from the Morro Bay Rock, winds along the Embarcadero, past restaurants and tourist shops, and ends at Tidelands Park.  Despite how crowded it looks in the photo, it’s actually a lot of fun.  People ring their bells and honk their bike horns and cheer and wave to the pedestrians.  For this year’s parade, I thought it would be a great idea to attach tin can noise-makers to our bikes, and the results turned out better than I expected.  The cans made an incredible racket that added to the merriment of the parade, and other riders made sure to give us a lot of room to let those cans clank and drag along behind us.

7.4.2015B

A lot of people waved and cheered and laughed when they saw us riding by with tin cans trailing from our bikes.  For some strange reason, though, we kept getting asked the same question:

“Just married?”

I don’t have any photos from the actual parade because it was a lot nicer to just ride without a phone or a camera in my hands.  Also, I needed my hands free so that I could wave to all the people who came out to watch and enjoy the event.

Happy 4th of July!

 


by Leave a comment

Day 180/365: Allergy Testing Day, Week 2

Today’s appointment at the allergist’s office was just like last week’s appointment.  It involved being pricked all over my back with various samples of allergens.  Then the nurse set the timer to fifteen minutes.  Last week, I only had a couple of small allergic reactions, but today was different.  Within a minute, I could feel my back becoming incredibly itchy.  The nurse returned to the room to check on me and got started right away with taking notes and measurements of the red areas.  Just as she was finishing up, the timer dinged.  I was glad that she didn’t wait the full fifteen minutes before starting the process of noting the allergic reactions on my back, because she would have come in to find me scratching like crazy.

When I got home, I wanted Sean to take a look at my back.  He was not interested one bit.

“You’re not even looking,” I said.  “See how bad my allergic reaction was?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’m hungry and I want to go to lunch.  I kind of don’t want to ruin my appetite.”

Some husband.  Now I know where he draws the line.

Anyway, I knit a few more rows on the orange sock today.  I thought about taking a photo of that, but then I thought you would be more interested in seeing a photo of why Sean didn’t want to ruin his appetite, instead.

6.29.2015B

Mmmm… Sean had the chirashi bowl.

Luckily, I am not allergic to raw fish.

6.29.2015A

Salmon, yellowtail, and mackerel sashimi. It helps that we are on the half marathon training plan.


by Leave a comment

Day 179/365: 150 Miles in the Car, Plus 5.62+ Miles on Foot

I can’t remember if I mentioned that Sean and I are now back on the half marathon training plan.  The schedule called for a 4-mile run today.  So after breakfast this morning, we headed out for our run.  One and .62 miles into it (according to my Garmin wristwatch), the arches of my feet ached and I was thirsty and tired.  I realized that I hadn’t had enough to drink that morning.  Also, I’d chosen to wear a new pair of compression socks, and they were hurting rather than helping me.  I stopped running, and Sean and I walked the rest of the way home.

Since I had another appointment for allergy testing on Monday morning in Oxnard, today’s schedule also called for me and Sean to drive down to Ventura.  After we walked back home, we packed up our stuff and started the 150-mile drive from Morro Bay to Ventura.  We stopped at Los Olivos for lunch.  I made sure to drink a lot of water and iced tea on the drive down, because I was determined to get my 4 miles in today and stick to the training schedule.

We didn’t get back to Ventura until nearly 5 PM, so we didn’t start our run until after 6 PM.  And rather than count this morning’s 1.62 miles, I stuck to 4 miles this evening, which explains why I’m late posting today’s entry and why I am going to be so sore tomorrow.

6.28.2015

Look– the heel is turned!

 


by Leave a comment

Day 176/365: Something Else That’s Going to Be Orange

The other night I was in the kitchen and Sean was in the living room, browsing the internet on his laptop.  He made a comment about checking out the day’s blog post.  And then I heard him say, “Aw, not this same sock again!”

He used his “I’m just teasing you” voice, but I think there was some truth behind his “just kidding” dismay of seeing the orange sock again.  Because I was getting kind of sick of seeing the same sock every day, too.  So even though last night I started knitting the second sock to the pair, I decided not to take a photo of that for today’s blog entry.  Instead, this evening I took a photo of what my pumpkin seedlings look like now.  They’re the ones I wrote about in this post.  Halloween is still a few months away, but I think we’re on track for some nice fat orange pumpkins by then.

6.25.2015


by 1 Comment

Day 171/365: The Day L.A. Galaxy Plays Philadelphia Union

6.20.2015

I’m typing this entry in a hotel room at the Hampton Inn in Carson.  Sean and I drove into L.A. this afternoon to see the L.A. Galaxy play Philadelphia Union at the Stub Hub Center.  The game starts at 7:30 PM, but we have to leave in a few minutes to allow for the time it takes to walk the mile to the stadium, get through security, check out assorted L.A. Galaxy merchandise, buy me cotton candy and a soft pretzel, mill around with the rest of the crowd, and find our seats.

I brought my knitting along and worked on my sock during the drive.  You can’t really tell from the photo, but I’m up to the gusset, which is where things start to get a little more exciting, because I’m that much closer to turning the heel.  Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to bring my knitting to the game, I’ve been to enough of these events with Sean to know that’s not a good idea.  So I’ll leave the knitting for now and pick it up again for the drive back home.