Just Keep Sewing, Just Keep Sewing...

I'm more excited about my race costume than I should be.

Maybe it's that Halloween is coming, or that there seemed to be more guides to making your own perfect Elsa dress (sadly, most were for children) on Pinterest than usual. But it was probably Once Upon a Time getting into the Frozen madness. I will admit I stopped watching in the middle of season 2 because it all just came so repetitive. Aww, (insert villain's name here) is only evil because their (wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/child) was (killed/kidnapped), or their (parent/grandparent/neighbor's hairdresser's dog) was mean to them! They aren't REALLY evil deep down! Oh and they're related to Henry. 

But then I saw the ads for Frozen. Part of me rolled my eyes; annoyed by this obvious hop onto the gravy train. But the other part of me (the part with the Netflix account and seven pairs of Mickey Ears) demanded that I catch up on the show so I could be well informed on the story when the new season started. Yes, I hate-watched the Wizard of Oz storyline something fierce, but I really tried to give it it's best chance. 

Oh yes, I went there.

The high point was The Little Mermaid (AHH MY FAVORITE) with Regina's Ursula impression. Regina has always been my favorite, but I really want more excuses for her to be Ursula, relevance be damned! Anyway, onto this season. I wasn't expecting much but it was worth jumping back into the show. I do love Frozen after all, and the obvious references to the movie ("Aren't you cold?" "It never bothered me") are sort of fun. Plus, if you're fine with the show ignoring every other inhabitant of Storybrooke (which I might be) then hey life is good. The sorcerer's hat made a brief appearance in a cliffhanger, and I'm calling Yensid out as the fairy tale book writer right now. My inner Disney geek is thrilled. 

So anyway, back to race costumes. For a show that has such beautiful costumes on the regular (and I could admit that in the depths of season 3) I could understand why people were expecting Elsa's dress to be a little more spectacular. On the other hand though, it did look very practical for going about your day and ruling a country. and if she hacked off the skirt she could probably run in it!  

So now we know what happened when the Fringe timeline reset. 

With that inspiration in mind, I set about starting the top of the ice queen dress portion. The perfect fabric was easy to come by, and I definitely wasn't the only person at Joann's making an Elsa dress. I used a meshy tank top I had found at TJ Maxx, and some inspiration this t-shirt tutorial. I don't know much about sewing, so this seemed like a safe bet. I settled in with Once Upon a Time and got started.

Here's what I did. I'll be better about taking pictures at each step in the future!

1. I put on the meshy top over my sports bra and drew a few dots in pencil to outline where the sweetheart neckline would be.

Sorry this picture is terrible.

2. Get some waxed paper (or some other see-through paper) to trace the dots. Fold it in half a cut it. Voila! you have a pattern!  I made a low scoop for the back portion.

3. Trace that pattern onto your sequin fabric.

4. Again I know almost nothing about sewing so I thought I'd just hem this nonsense by hand. Don't do that. Pin that business to your undershirt (meshy top in my case) and save your tears for something worth it. 

5. I opened up the seams on my sides of my meshy top and resewed them with the sequin fabric inside. There is probably a better way to do this. Maybe make one piece of fabric rather than a separate front and back?

6. Sew the top of the front piece to your shirt along those pencil marks.

7. Sew the sides. I left the top of the back open to attach a cape later.

8. Jack it up! I used glitter glue and flat backed gems. I'm not sure if they'll hold up during the run, but they look nice!

YouTube was my savior during this process. I borrowed a sewing machine with a downloadable manual (ugh) and needed some help setting the thing up. Darling Adventures and Singer Sewing Company have awesome channels that helped me set up (and unjam) my machine several times. Seriously, if you're as clueless as I am, watching someone put the bobbin into the machine is so much more helpful than reading a description!

I'm trying to work on this a little at a time, but I'll be writing more about making costumes!

Leprechaun Lope

One week later...

Sorry for not posting about the race sooner, but it has been an exhausting week! Flying into Salt Lake City, coming home to work a 12 hour shift, then a camping trip has left me with very little time to recover.

I flew into Salt Lake on Friday, checked into my hotel, and set out to explore! I was pretty close to downtown and despite the snow on the mountains, it was really warm. Temple Square was my point of reference for everything while planning the trip, but I didn't expect it to be surrounded by office buildings. It looked like a castle in the middle of a city.

I'm getting this Instagram thing down.

I could see the capitol building, which served as the race start point, from there and decided to go up and look around. If anyone ever tells you that they had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to school, they probably live it Salt Lake City. At this point, I was still having my Rapunzel-esque internal struggle of whether or not this was a terrible idea. I tried to focus on how good my butt would look after hiking up to the starting line the next morning, but really I was dreading it.

Right next to Temple Square is City Creek Mall.

I spent the rest of the day (and probably too much money) there. It was glorious. This mall covers two levels on two blocks with a retractable roof, which was open that day. I started getting a little chilly after the water fountain show (which included fire because why not?) and passed out in my hotel around 9:30 pm because I'm nintey-three and a half.

BUT I did get up nice and early on race day. The temperature was in the 30s (good research there, Eryn) and I walked up that giant hill again. Packet pick-up went pretty quickly, and race coordinators said that there were about 1000 people there for the 5k and 10k. The course looped behind the capitol building, so I didn't have to run up the giant hill in front of it, thank you baby jesus.

However, this was far from being a flat course. We raced uphill for the first half before turning around and heading back down.

If you froze to death while waiting at the starting line, you could have rolled downhill to the finish.

Much easier said than done. I felt like my lungs were freezing, which in addition to my lack of training lead to a lot of walking in the first half. I ran whenever I could, and tried to push myself to run a few steps further before walking my next chunk. I kept pace with an adorable little yorkie in the final uphill push toward the water station, and I wish I had my camera because the view was amazing. You could see the dome of the capitol, down into Temple Square, and the mountains in the distance. But then it was time to head back down. I did manage to run the whole second half, but I felt like I was doing really badly. The second half of the race did have Leprechauns handing out chocolate coins to racers though, so I wasn't down on myself for long! After the race we were offered some healthy snacks and invited to join the school's St. Patrick's day parade float. I was exhausted, so I skipped the parade and headed back to my hotel, which was right on the parade route. After getting some much needed coffee, I gave my legs a rest and watched the parade.

"This is the place (for fresh roasted coffee beans)"

My race time ended up being 44 minutes. I'm a little disappointed, but I try to focus on the positive. It's better to have run slowly than not at all! Overall, this was a good experience. Since the next few months are full of graduations and weddings, I'm going to focus on training and making better time for my next race.