I AM SO DONE! {CRAFT ROOM REDO}

It has been an extremely long path getting to a finished craft room.

Pretty much everything in this room was constructed by my husband and myself. I'll share more details in the coming days, but I'm excited to share a few before and after pictures...

This is what the room looks like NOW:

I'll start with one of my favorite parts of the sewing room: my grandmother's scissors. She was a seamstress, and I think I have sewing + creativity in my genes. 

Rolling craft table, rolled up to the counter of the cabinet. 

This cabinet is a BEAST. It's 97" long and has amazing storage! 

I had made a computer desk previously and it had no drawers, ultimately, I NEED STORAGE DRAWERS!

I am also pile things, so my hope is I can keep on top of that pile on the left (pray for me?)

This is the view across from the window, the glass door to the left goes into our foyer (currently a disaster) and the doorway on the right goes into our son's room. 

The upper fabric storage is MY take on an antique mail sorter, just enormous! My husband built that beast in ONE day! He's the best! The lower cabinet started it's life as a computer desk that I abandoned. It sat, collecting cobwebs in our garage until I decided to adapt it into a cabinet to hold my printers! ALSO, my previous desk had ZERO storage, and I wanted a place to store our files, so this has worked perfectly. 

One of the first projects in this room was the closet. These door organizers add so much organized, easy access, storage!

I am finally able to have my gift wrap IN the craft room (it used to be in a closet!)

Inside this closet we added shelves along the left and right side, and kept the center open to hold this rolling Silhouette cart, it is the PERFECT height to roll up to my computer desk when I'm cutting with my Silhouette. Above my Silhouette is my embroidery unit for my sewing machine. I also keep a tall ladder to quickly grab fabric OR high bins from the closet. 

Rolling Silhouette Cart 

These gorgeous peonies are THE MOST BEAUTIFUL. I literally moved them around the room so they could be given ALL THE GLORY! Aren't they gorgeous?!

 One of the hidden stars of this new, updated room is the closet storage. The previous unit that we tore out was really minimal (and meant for clothing) the new updated version has TWO really high shelves, for items that I don't need frequently, but are nice to have on hand...

Realistically, my plan for my sewing area will look more like this--with my sewing machine out on the large rolling cart. I may also try to purchase a cutting mat to cover this entire cutting surface area.

And I'm slightly HORRIFIED to show you what this room looked like before. It was such a mish-mash of making things work (terribly?) and using what we had to make it work. It wasn't really meeting my needs and it was just CONSTANT chaos. We had purchased inexpensive Target shelves, I think for $30 each, and a mix and match situation of items we had to be used in my craft room. About 5 years ago I built a new sewing table, but ultimately the apron was a little deep and it made it hard for my legs to fit under the table while sewing. Sometimes it's not worth making-do for a second longer.

Prepare yourself, take a Xanax, especially you OCD types this is ugly:

printer area (the other printer was in our foyer) with paper storage beneath, and the laminator next to the printer, and Silhouette cutting mats in the drawer. Closet, exploding with random items. 

Craft table (antique from my great uncle) but with abandoned projects and things that needed to be put away

To be fair, I started organizing bins in the middle of the floor WHILE quilting a t-shirt quilt, I assure  you the room was a mess already, but the added chaos is the quilting... 

Old computer, meet new computer--previously the computers lived in our foyer on the desk with no storage

All of my craft/fabric storage was on these three target bookshelves that I purchased in our old house. They felt  really small for this room (with really high ceilings) one shelf broke in the move, but I used it for five more years...I sold these on facebook marketplace and now they are living a good life somewhere else. 

As I emptied, everything made it's way into our foyer, and then into our attic that I had emptied last fall. 

This is after the bookshelves were removed, but lots of craft junk remained

Sorting and thinning out craft junk

the hallway into my sons' room stored craft items I anticipated needing during the project. 

The original closet before being torn out 

closet after tearing out the shelves (5 months ago in JANUARY!)

And just so you aren't left with nightmares, just remember what it looks like now:

This room is TRULY a mixture of hard work, following instructions, and creativity. I am so thankful for my husband's help. We DID hire someone to install the two light fixtures, and in my opinion, it was COMPLETELY worth it. This entire project was SEVEN large handmade items. Our home was in chaos for about 5 (almost 6) months, so also thank you to my children, who tolerated my big mess, and to anyone who entered my door, for not judging me by the mess inside! I'll share more details about my vision, the building plans we used, etc. in the coming weeks.

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Spring Cleaning in January

So since I started feeling better, I've been a busy bee. I woke up this morning thinking about blueberry muffins-yum, right?! So, I was bummed when I pulled everything out only to realize I forgot vegetable oil yesterday at the store (boo!) I decided to use applesauce instead (the recommended alternative.)

The blueberry muffins turned out to be delicious, but very dense.

And for some reason when I pulled them out, they left a lot of moisture inside the muffin pan. Hmmm?

My husband asked me to clean before the weekend so he wouldn't have to help on Saturday {awesome, right?!} So that's what's on my plate today...

BUT, yesterday I ended up running some errands. I ended up going to Target which was amazing and dangerous. I was able to score some MAJOR deals. They had a ton of items marked 75% off, and a case lot sale-I'm not sure if that's what they are really called, but back when I had access to the Commissary they would hold bulk sales and call them Case Lot Sales...Anyway, it was a great shopping day for me...and then I came home.

I had a million bags (yay and boo!) new things were everywhere, I already was piling the items I was going to return and just had a major mess on my hands. Not to mention, my husband had made the cleaning comment, so I had a bit of a challenge on my hands. (And the trash truck just drove by and we had a bunch of snow last night so our trash didn't make it outside, boo!)

I think it is very important to recycle, we had a great/easy recycling program in the last place we lived, but here we have to take our recyclables to the Walmart parking lot and drop them off into the bins ourselves. It's not hard, but it's just an extra step and often an extra trip. I was able to get a washable recyclable organizer/sorter thing at IKEA that is great, BUT when it was sitting in my kitchen it just made for a stinky mess-with tons of fruit flies, so we brought it to the garage (it's current home) and now I just stack the recyclables by the kitchen sink until my husband brings them down to the sorter. It really started annoying me, and always looked so messy. Until yesterday.

I apologize because these pictures aren't fantastic, but you'll get the idea.

This is the before state (UGH! What a MESS!):

 I actually in theory use these linking rings (children's teether toy) to snap together to cabinets, because there are a few chemicals in there, BUT, that being said it's never linked shut and my son never messes with it.

 Here is the inside of my cabinet, a mess, that's been bothering me for some time:

 I started by emptying out. I was trying to save this plastic dish tray liner, because I don't know what to do with it and I can't recycle it, and I hate the idea of it sitting in a landfill for eternity. It's now sitting on the floor by my trash can.

 Here's all the goods from the cabinet:

 I used my new amazing toy: my Silhouette SD (thank you Honey!) I've been scared to use it I'm not sure why, it's expensive, I don't want to break it, but I had to experiment. This was my first time using the vinyl:

 I bought two bins at the Dollar Tree, one for cleaning, and one to store the recyclables before they go to the sorter in the garage. Behind the bins I store trash bags, paper towels (we barely use a roll a month--a resolution from 2 years ago to waste less-we now use washable dishrags most of the time!) I also bought some Lysol wipes (I have a kid-as far as I'm concerned a must have!)

 I apparently lived through the Great Depression or the Holocaust in a previous life, because I stockpile things AND I have to use EVERYTHING up and waste NOTHING! So I have three things of dishwasher detergent right now. I've asked my husband to help to use at least ONE so we use them up. I also treated myself to Mrs. Meyers Cleaning products--I'm saving them for when I use up what I have!

 I now also have a proper place to store the recyclables!

 It makes a big difference. I also cleaned off all the counters and that made a big difference. Let's see how this new organization technique works. Oh, and I did move some of the cleaning supplies into a bin that my son can't get to in my laundry room-so they are still easy to access, but not for little hands.

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