the results are in...

So I did not hit the 50lbs mark this week.  ended up 2.2 pounds shy of it.  It'll be taken care of next week (hopefully).  While sitting here typing I decided to do measurements quick....of course it's cheat day and I usually do measurements in the morning instead of afternoon and a couple of cheat day meals in but today has been a blur with a fun improv class at the HUGE theater in Minneapolis.  Anyway the measurements currently stand as follows since the start.
navel: down 8.5 inches
Hips: down 9.25 inches
Thighs: same (I say the same because they fluctuate up or down within .5 inches each week)
Biceps: same

Last night was another great bike ride, 9.5 miles total trip.  It would have been longer but I left the bikes night lights at home and it was getting dark towards the end of the trip.  The plan for the next week remains the same, continue to hit the cardio every day and the weight lifting 3 day a week along with the regular egg bake and chili.

I am slightly apprehensive about Easter tomorrow.  This is my first true Holiday test to see how it all works out. 

When in Beano do as the Beanos do

I have to say that this weeks food plan was probably the toughest I’ve had to eat down since I started the ritual of making my breakfast and lunches in advance.  It started Saturday with the idea that I could just put Salsa into the eggs and add some spinach instead of taking the time to chop some peppers and onions up.  So I took that idea and ran with it during grocery shopping, I picked up a huge jar of organic salsa and poured that in with the eggs and added some chopped spinach to it and a couple cloves of garlic, poured it into the dish and put a can of black beans on top and popped it into the oven.  It came out looking very colorful and pretty. 

Look it's pretty....deceiving!!!

Until time came to eat the egg bake.  The extra juice from the salsa made the egg bake more crumbly than solid and the salsa also brought out the taste of the spinach, in my opinion.  It wasn’t anything that wasn’t edible but it definitely sits at the bottom of the list of egg bakes made.  From now on any salsa will just go on top of instead of inside of it.  There is some debate on if using the whole small jar of Garlic was a bit too much, I found that I didn’t have any vampire attacks this week so I’ll chalk it up as a win for now.  Beyond that I’m going to take a break from spinach for a week, two weeks in a row of spinach is enough for me.  I’m not a fan of spinach in a can by any means but it’s one of the best foods out there, I mean look at Popeye!!



I yam what I yam....and quite a man to eat spinach out of a can



To top it off the chili I made was actually overly spicy this week, I used ½ pound less turkey than I normally do with the same amount of spices (which I’m blaming on the extra Oomph to it.)  Normally I don’t mind spicy chili but with the overly potent crumbly spinachy garlicy egg bake the spices didn’t sit well with me.



I'll tell you what I want what I really really want....BEANO!!!



Could definitely have used some beano this week, that’s for certain.

Otherwise this afternoon is the weigh in for my week and to see if I hit that goal of 50lbs. lost that I mentioned yesterday.  I’ll try to get a post in tomorrow on the status of it, and hopefully this weekend find time to work on my leather scale mail project to post a blog on that next week.  Thanks for reading and have yourself a great Easter if you Celebrate it.

An update and a goal broken or is this the week to plateau?

It’s been a few posts and I haven’t updated anything on where I’m currently at in regards to my weight goals.  I’ve been making it a weekly habit (but not making it an important issue) of stepping on the scale every Friday when I leave for work.  There are two reasons I’ve been doing this 1) mainly to see if what I’m doing is having any effect on beyond how I feel and 2) I leave at the same time every Friday and the scale is on the way out to the elevators.  I realize it’s Thursday and tomorrow will be another weigh in but as of last Friday I’ve dropped 44.8 lbs. since I started the rehealthabitation (it’s a word, I made it up!) 11 weeks ago. 

I made a goal this week to hit the 50 lbs. mark by tomorrow.  While I did that I made myself aware of a few things.

It’s going to take more work (almost 7 lbs. vs. the average 4 losing a week)

Don’t be led by the allure of the scale (I’ve said this from the beginning)

Eventually there will be a plateau as your body adjusts

I’ve been fascinated/inspired/amazed with articles lately on the “average Joe” weight loss and it seems that almost each one I’ve read has talked about hitting a plateau and powering through it.  As you change your eating habits and add exercise but after a while the usual progress isn’t there anymore and it seems that nothing can be done towards getting closer to your goal.  I admit in the past when we’ve had a workout or health challenge at work that I participated in, I would get frustrated with not seeing anything change on the scale when I’m busting my hump in the gym every day.

Looking back I realized that the exercise is only part of the equation, while I thought I was eating okay, it was just that….OKAY. A rushed morning, which happened rather frequently with two children less than 2 years old to get ready, meant stopping at McDonalds for breakfast.  The sausage mcmuffin, hash brown and iced vanilla coffee was convenient and easy and quite frankly yummy.  Substituting that for the egg bake that I create every Sunday I found is much more efficient and my body starts the day with much less of the unknown and more of me knowing what it is that is going into my body. I still cringe every time I see pink slime. 

Going back to the plateau; I know it’s going to happen eventually.   If it’s an omen that it just so happens on the week I set a small goal for myself to hit the 50 loss mark then so be it.  It’s not going to lead me to give up and embrace McDonalds again (even if Saturday is cheat day).  So that being said I’ve increased my daily activity level every day this week, Monday my client and I walked around Como Zoo, Lake Como and Rosedale Mall (7 laps) Tuesday I dusted off the bike and the child carrier and took the boy for a bike ride. 



How can you say no to that face???



Wednesday night was another bike ride after taking the boy to the playground and playing with him there for 20 minutes.  I got tired of not knowing how much ground I was making so I downloaded an app for my phone that tells me how much distance is covered and time etc. on Tuesday night after the bike ride and Wednesdays ride ended up being 6.7 miles.  Today is work again tonight and I can’t help but expect my client to want to walk around the lake and a mall before settling on dinner and more walking after dinner but we’ll find out.  On top of the nightly exercise I’ve also been at the gym every day this week (sans Monday as I didn’t work) with my lifting program.  I added the back workout into the mix this week to hit the gym each day and not re-do a previous workout.  Tomorrow afternoon will be time to find out what, if any, results I have to show for my efforts.  Regardless of the outcome; I’m feeling better than I have in a while, and it helped reinforce everything of where I’m going by picking up the 50lbs dumbbell at the gym today for a lift.

Making a leather gauntlet

So it’s been over a week since I said check back tomorrow for results or some rot like that.  Truth be told I took the process with baby steps and it took me a week to actually get the final product together.  The first attempt I made I used a pattern that I like that I had found online, Google “gauntlet pattern” and you’ll find plenty of them.  I put it together using the step by step instructions.  The particular pattern I used was designed for metal, well leather is just as workable and a lot less sharp edges and well frankly I’m more experienced with leather than metal.  The first attempt ended up being far too bulky for my preference and needed to be attached to a glove in order for it to stay connected to your hand.  I didn’t like it.  I gave it some thought and started etching out a pattern for the fingers and body of the gauntlet.  I knew how the pieces had to go from previously looking at them and the previous attempt so it was a matter of customizing the pattern to my particular preference.  I decided that I liked the ½ finger style instead of the full finger because it would limit the lack of range of motion with the whole hand.  I wanted this to be interesting and functional at the same time.  I started out with the fingers and once I had a general outline in paper transferred them to leather and did more work to get them to fit comfortably.

The next step was designing the body, I knew I wanted to have it covering the back of the hand and it had to be secured around the wrist.  At first I intended to use a buckle to secure the wrist piece but elected to change my mind later (we’ll touch on that later)

There was a gap between the fingers and the main body of the gauntlet that I wanted to address so I did so with a rectangular piece of leather. 

The gap that concerned me was mainly between the fingers and the tops of the knuckles so the leather was wet down and placed over the knuckles where it would sit and taped to my hand for an hour to help form it to my hand.

Once all the forming and hole punching was done it was time for me to tool the leather.  Using different tools and designs I stuck with the leaf theme that would complement my other leather armor along with the color scheme of leather dye.

Once the tooling had set in and the dye had dried it was time to seal the leather to prevent the dye from bleeding should it get wet.  Once the seal had dried it was assembly time.  I used copper rivets to hold the fingers and thumbs to the main body and a copper buckle on the top of the wrist.  Once the buckle was attached it was immediately obvious that it was adding too much bulk to the overall design so it was removed in favor of a pair of dual brass snaps to ensure that the wrist would stay in place and keep a secure fit to the hand.  One of the great things about leather is that while it is sealed and set it will still get wet from sweat, rain, etc. and the more it’s used the more it will continue to shape to the hand; this is something that I wouldn’t be able to have had I used metal.  Nor would I have been able to add the tooling or personal flair to it (could have etched the metal but I don’t have access to such tools at this time.)

This would have been a cool post....

I had another post on costuming, well tooling leather for a couple of other projects I'm working on but took an epic fail and left my phone at home with the pictures...the words only do so much justice so check back in tomorrow for what would have been todays post.

This is why you should read more than just comic books as a kid.....

So, in the past I've had some pretty good success at playing matchmaker for friends and today I happened across a pair of people and I had the thought that they would be a good match.  Upon this revelation of thought I brought it up to Liz to get a second opinion....below is the wrap up of our conversation......

Ted:

They’re both single…..

They both live in Minneapolis!

Liz:

That has nothing to do with attraction

Lol

Ted:

I didn’t say it had to work!!!! They’re not friends on FB so I thought I’d try to set them up…

Liz:

Well you could suggest them to each other on Fb and let them take it from there… that way its not hey- you’re desperate and lonely – so is he/she!

Ted:

Its not like that, I guess that would work

They both like theatre….

Liz:

Fine, play Yenta

Ted:

Blink…gaddanggit…stupid fancy words

(bloggers note)

At this point I went to dictionary.com to determine exactly what Yenta was/is/means

(resume conversation)

I am not!!!!

“a person, especially a woman, who is a busybody or gossip.”

Liz:

LOL!!!

It’s the matchmaker’s name from Fiddler on the Roof

Well XXXXXXXXX is Jewish…..

Ted:

Omg….really….you’re going to play that card?

Liz:

LOL!!!

Ted:

I don’t expect him to catechize her about faith or require anyone to convert

Liz:

I meant that maybe she does need a Yenta….geeez

Ted:

I’m just trying to be adroit

Liz:

Ok….as long as you’re astute too

Ted:

Gaddanggit

I JUST CLOSED THE LINK!!!!!

Liz:

Hahahahahaha

Ted:

Sunofa..

Liz:

Or sagacious

Ted:

We’re done

Liz:

Check and mate

Ted:

I read comic books growing up

Not that Jane Austin crap

Liz:

Oh I’m sorry, let me put it in words you’d understand then…ahem….”zoinks!!” “Bam!!!” “Konk!!!!”

Renaissance costuming

So I’ve spent a good portion of this blog talking about food and exercise and healthy stuff.  I remember reading somewhere that one thing to add to that is hobbies.  One of my hobbies ties in perfectly with Renaissance festival is leather craft.  That is producing products with leather. Think “Steampunk” but no steam and less punk.  The first project that I did with the assistance of Good Mr. Robin Hood himself was leaf shaped Pauldrons (shoulder armor)

the beginning of tooling

tooling completed and shaping commenced



finishing touches



 Now there has been some misconception that the  Renaissance Festival provides the costumes for the workers, while that is true for some of the food workers those who are in the street or on the stage that is not the case.  We have to provide and make our own clothes.  Armed with this knowledge we learn to sew and become crafty or trade services of things we can do in exchange for things others can do better.  Unless you play Will Scarlet…then you pretty much just mooch off everyone and contribute a few laughing matters to the group…so yes, if you see an ad for auditions for Will Scarlet THAT is the role you want. (PS this is a test to see if Sean is reading this)

Now that the bruises from the beating have healed enough for me to continue this post I shall.  Each year I like to try to create something new for my character.  I do this for a few reasons,

·        It helps keep the “skill” honed

·        It provides backup costumes for something to happen to my favorite

·        It helps provide a creative outlet

The project I came up with this year was inspired by a character from Jane and the Dragon.  One of the nice things about Children is that they give you an excuse to watch cartoons even though you’d gladly do so as an adult regardless.  The concept is a Surcoat with armor on it.



The concept



 

What I took away from the picture and used as my own idea is below.  I took a previous canvas piece that I had and trimmed it to fit.  I had leather scales in my workshop that I cut in half to use as the scales.  The scales I used are about 2 in. by 4.5 in.   I laid out the canvas surcoat and the leather on top of it to determine which pieces I will have to cut and shape to fit the upper chest and shoulders portion.  Mark the holes on the fabric and punch holes into the fabric which a rivet will pass through to secure the leather to the fabric.  This is the step I’ve just completed and am in the process of attaching all the pieces of leather to the fabric.



the blue is Carpet, the gray line is where the scale will go to,
the green is trim that was already on the material prior to starting this project.
(For some reason this is uploading rotated)