Home from Retreat and the rest of the craft room

What a great weekend! I don't know about anyone else but I had an awesome time and can't wait to go again!I'll post more about our trip when I get the pictures all ready to go. In the meantime I'm going to finish up the tour of the craft room.

Next up in the tour is the corner which has my peg board that holds a lot of the embellishments used for scrap booking. It also has the dresser we bought at the thrift store and fixed up. I talked about that in an earlier post. I keep tools, printer paper and other misc. stuff in the drawers. I keep my cuttlebug, mini storage bins, family pictures and such on the shelves.



Moving over to the next corner, I have a bookcase that houses my scrapping magazines.


On top of the bookcase I have a spinner that Dan built for me to store my mill hill beads. They used to be just dumped in a plastic bin and you had to dig through them to find something. Sometimes, you missed that you had something when you were digging and then you went and bought a new package that you didn't really need. I was going to just put them on peg board like my scrapping embellishments but I was running out of wall space and Dan kept saying, "you're covering up all my nice green walls" so I took the hint and said if you don't want your nice green walls covered, build me a mini spinner! POOF! He disappeared in a puff of smoke and when he reappeared he was carrying this!


Perfect! Just Perfect! I love having a handy husband. Makes my life so much easier. I am truly spoiled.

To the right of the bookcase is the Barbie closet. Not all the barbies are in this closet though. I have too many for that but a good bit of them are here as well as the clothes and accessories. I love to build dioramas starring the girls so I have a lot of accessories. It's kind of like decorating only on a smaller scale. Behind the dolls you can see, are 2 more rows of dolls only they are sideways to fit more in.


Then we have the craft closet where the rest of the cross stitch supplies live as well as the sewing and crafting supplies.

On the top shelf are all my cross stitch and quilting magazines as well as other crafting books.

I keep my charts in page protectors and store them in binders. Except for my Paula Vaughn charts, they don't fit in a standard page protector. So they are stored with the magazines. The binders keep the charts from being beat to crap in a drawer and, if I want to, I can organize them by designer, or alphabetically or by theme. Whatever works best for me. Right now, they aren't organized at all except that they are all in the binders instead of a drawer like they were.



The middle shelf holds all the photos to be scrapped on the left, to the right of the pictures you'll see the box I keep the overdyeds in (for now), the floss bobbin boxes and the tremendously expensive floss for the Peace Sampler that I blogged about in an earlier post.


Next to that I have button and loose craft bead storage, sewing supplies, quilting supplies and just misc. craft supply storage. All drawers are labeled so if someone other than myself is crafting, they can find things easily.

The next shelf holds the bins of overflow floss I talked about in my floss storage post, in the middle are two bins. The left bin has finished cross stitch pieces that aren't framed, the right one has the dreaded UFO's.


Sitting on the floor on the left are my drawers of cotton fabric for quilting and crafting. In front of them are my Bernina and my Singer Featherweight sewing machines.


Next to the fabric is a file cabinet where I keep kits and kitted up projects.


and finally are more drawers that contain quilting supplies and rubber stamps.


That's pretty much it for the craft room. I'm still working on my overdyed storage system. I think I have something figured out but want to tweak it a bit before I share.

I need to go unpack my bags from this weekend and then I think I have to clean my bedroom. The dust bunnies are getting larger than the dogs!

Have a great day everyone and thanks for stopping in!

Some more Craft room

Good Morning!

Hope everyone is having a great week! The weather has been bee-u-ti-ful here. It could stay this way till May and then get nice again. I wouldn't mind. Really.

Amy is still not feeling the greatest but I believe she is on the mend. Last nights lack of sleep probably isn't going to help much. Her dog Kallie got sick all over her bed at 3 this morning. She brought her in to me to watch while she was changing the bedding and poor Kallie then got sick again..... on my arm. Nothing like warm vomit to wake you up! At least it wasn't on the bed, I only have one pair of sheets until my new set arrives this week sometime!

Here's a pic of the little sickie this morning. I don't think she's feeling quite up to par.



Today's tour of the craft room will begin with my scrapbooking paper storage. A couple of years ago when the girls started scrapping also, the paper requirements went through the roof and the previous storage solutions just weren't cutting it any more. I couldn't afford to buy a system that was already made since I was spending a small fortune on supplies, so I threw myself on Dan and begged him to design and build me something. The man will do practically anything if you give him the right incentive. Lucky for me I know what that incentive is! This is what he came up with.


I have slots for all the different colors of paper and then slots for patterned paper plus a few extra slots for things like pages in progress and kits that have been bought. The unit hangs on the wall above the tables.


When I was trying to decide what configuration I wanted to put the tables in I started with an L shape. We set the tables up and by the time we put the computer, printer and silhouette cutter on the table, I lost one entire table of work space. Not good if several are scrapping at the same time. I pondered on the situation for a while, and thought perhaps we should buy another table, they aren't terribly expensive and I could then put them in a U shape. After some measuring though, I decided that another table was going to be too deep and I would still lose too much work space. Pondering again brought me to the conclusion that I needed to throw myself on Dan once again and have him build a narrower hanging shelf/table. And it needed to match the tops of the other tables that he had put laminate on as the paper crap they cover them with peels off easily and looks bad after about a month. This turned out to be an easier fix than we anticipated. While at Lowes to buy supplies, he found a ready made counter with the right laminate in the damaged section and picked it up for a song. He then cut the back off of it so that it would be the depth I needed (17") and voila! I now have plenty of work space and the computer and printer are handy but not interfering in any way.


See that nice wood laminate flooring? That's all new. We previously had a light colored laminate in there that Dan had dribbled and dropped super glue and enviro tex all over when he was using the room for his business. I tried for 3 hours to clean a little 3 x 3 inch spot on the old floor before I gave up and said we needed to install a new floor. This floor, while it looks nice, is very, very, very, cheap. If I was the only one that was going to be down there it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm not. The other night Abby was down there scrapping and she called me down to consult on a page she was doing and proceeded to push herself off of one table and roll over to the other table. Then she did it again in the other direction! This is so much fun mom! You should try it! Now I'm sure it's fun to do, but it's hard on the floor and I can already see scratches on it. I'm going to need a rug or something to protect it from a 21 year old daughter who sometimes acts like she's a 5 yr. old !

This is getting long again so I'm going to stop with the tour, give you a couple of cross stitch pictures and call it good.

Here is the November Cup O' Tea from Just Another Button Company. I still need to add the buttons though.


and my Chatalaine as of last night. Sorry the pic isn't very good but I didn't want to take it off the q-snaps as I plan to stitch on it today.


I need to get moving now. I want to decide what I'm taking to retreat and make a grocery list so I can get the food I will need for this weekend also. Have a great day everyone and thanks for stopping in and commenting!!

What to take to a stitching weekend and more craft room.

Thursday the 17th, I will be leaving for a few days to go to the shack and pack it up as we sign the papers on Friday. But after that bit of sadness I will be heading up the street to stay at this bed and breakfast. I will be met there by 8 other ladies for a weekend of stitching! I arranged this weekend in July when I was in Stuart for the 4th and before I knew the shack would sell. I mean really, who would buy my little piece of crap house?
I probably would have chosen a different date for the stitching if I had known. It will be a bittersweet weekend for me. I have a small problem with a stitching weekend though. Never having done anything like that before, I don't know what to take. Do I start something new? Take an old WIP? Something that requires a lot of concentration or something easy? My chatelaine or those annoying 12 dancing princesses? Or do I take it all? I have no idea. What have you done in the past for stitching weekends? I don't want to get up there and then not have the right stuff!

Time for another craft room installment. I showed you how I stored my DMC floss last time so I will continue the tour by showing you my fabric storage. Right now I have my fabric stored in the plastic bin on the right which sits under my DMC cabinets.



Fabric should not be folded. It can be very hard to get the crease out of fabric that has been folded in the same way for long periods of time. I know myself well enough to know that I won't re-fold it in a different way on a regular basis. I needed a new way to store my stash if I didn't want to keep it in a drawer folded in the same way year and year so I asked people on the 123 board about how they stored their fabric. There were a lot of great ideas but none of them were really what I was looking for, or they wouldn't work in my space. Ideally, fabric if it's not laid flat, or hung up full length should be rolled. I knew I didn't have a place to hang it, or to lay it out completely flat as that takes up too much space. This left me with rolling it. Which is all well and good as long as you don't over time smash the rolls down. I couldn't say for sure that smashing would never happen at my house so I needed to come up with a way to keep the rolls smash proof. Cardboard tubes don't work because they are full of acid, so after tossing around ideas, I decided to go with pvc pipe. I had Dan cut the pipe to specific sizes and then seal it as there is printing on it and although I don't think it would rub off I couldn't be sure. Then I used acid free tissue and rolled the individual pieces up on the pipe and pinned them with stainless steel pins. Stainless steel doesn't rust over time. This is how it looks.



Each drawer has a different count of fabric in it and each roll is labeled as to what it is, the size and if it is for a specific project, what that project is. It's very easy to see what I have and there are no creases. The hardest part of this process was finding an inexpensive bin with drawers wide enough for my fabric pieces. To be honest, I'm not happy with the one I bought because my larger pieces of fabric won't fit in the drawers without being folded. But for now this was only $13.00 which was the deciding factor in my mind. I'll have to watch Craigslist for another dresser, this time with long drawers. Alternatively, I can have Dan build me a piece to my specifications which is probably what will happen.

Amy has been sick since Friday. We are thinking it's just a cold or sinus infection as she has no fever, body aches, or chills. Right now she's behind me on the sofa, snoring loudly despite having told me not 15 minutes ago that she wasn't tired. Yeah, right! Snore away sleeping beauty, tomorrow is a school day!

I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping in and commenting. A big Welcome to the new followers! And thanks again for the wonderful compliments on the room and the suggestions for the over dyed threads. I have a couple of ways of storing them that I am pondering, I'll let you know when I get it figured out!

Warning! Long post. Floss storage

Good Morning!

I want to start this post with a big thank you for all the wonderful comments on the craft room. I am overwhelmed by the response and touched that some want more pictures. A special thanks has to go out to Daffycat as she posted about it on her blog which led people to mine. Thank you so much!

I had a lot of requests for more pictures and a lot of the requests I had were regarding my floss storage. I have kept my DMC in those nuts and bolt containers that most people use in their garage for 13 years or so. The reason I went to this method is because I have a ton of floss. At one time Hy-Vee food stores carried DMC. One day, Hy-Vee decided they weren't going to carry it anymore. They dumped it all in a big old box and slapped a 5 cents/skein price tag on it and put it in their dollar sale. Right about then I happened by and asked how much for the entire box. I think I paid $10.00 for the whole kit and kaboodle! Then I didn't know what to do with my find so I separated out all the different colors and put them in a ziploc baggie and then into grocery bags. But that made it hard to find a color when I was looking for it. I was complaining telling Dan about my problem one day and he suggested using the nut and bolt containers. So off we went to the store where we bought 7 of them for around $10.00/piece. Later when DMC added more colors we bought a smaller version as we couldn't find the size we had used before. I kept all of these containers in a closet and was quite happy with my system except for the fact that it took up a lot of valuable closet storage space. When we started planning the re-do of the basement room my plan was to still keep it in the closet. But when I started putting everything away....I found I didn't have as much room as what I needed for storage if I did that. I had also added the DMC varigated threads to my stash by this time and needed another storage container. I searched high and low for one the same size as my other ones. I even asked for your help in locating one the same size. Apparently, when I bought the original 7, I must have bought every one they produced because NO ONE had a container with the same dimensions as what I needed. I could find taller ones, shorter ones, and ones with fewer drawers but not 14.5w x 14h x 6.5d. That beast doesn't exist in my world anymore. What you will find is this . It's 18 inches tall and the drawers when you pull them out are slightly shorter than my original ones but they still work. They are also more expensive than they used to be. I thought about buying all new cabinets but decided I didn't want to spend the money when I had 7 perfectly good cabinets already. So I bought one of the 18 inch tall cabinets and decided to make it work. And if I had kept it all in the closet it would have been fine but I wanted that storage space freed up so I decided to just stack them on the floor of the craft room. First I tried them vertically, that was a bad idea. It was very wobbly, you had to lay on your stomach on the floor to see what was in the bottom drawers and when you place them on something to raise them up, being the vertically challenged person that I am, I couldn't see the top drawers. So I stacked them on the floor horizontally. Better, more stable but still laying on the floor to get to them. Dan suggested putting boxes underneath them and that would have worked but they were still too low for my liking. Then I thought, well, they are made for hanging so I'll just hang them. There are 2 problems with that idea. One being the number of holes you would put in your wall and the other, I am a balanced kinda person and with that one 18" cabinet it wasn't going to be a nice rectangular shape on the wall. After much discussion, Dan and I decided building a box that would hang on the wall allowing the cabinets to just slide into the box made the most sense. Fewer holes in the wall, stable, easy to see and it would pretty it up too! BUT, we still have that dumb 18" cabinet throwing a wrench in the works. After much thought we came up with the idea of putting a box inside the box to raise up some of the drawers and make everything all nice and even. And this is the result.


Some of you might have died from boredom right now and I apologize for the lengthy writing but I wanted to go over the process we went through to arrive at our final design to save you from having to think it all through yourselves should you decide to try something like this.

Here is a closeup version of the drawers.

As you can see, I have labeled each drawer with it's number and each drawer holds 5-6 skeins comfortably. Here is a picture of how the floss fits in the drawer.


In the nook we built I keep my containers for Kreinik threads. They fit perfectly in the little plastic organizers which fit perfectly in the nook.



Remember earlier when I said I had a lot of floss? I only keep 5-6 skeins in the cabinets. That still left me with a ton of floss still in those baggies. I decided that I needed a better way to store the overflow that made it easy to see what I had and what I didn't should I ever use all the skeins of a particular color in the drawers. This is what I came up with. Still in baggies, but with acid free mat board added to make them stand up and now they are in numerical order also. I keep up to 10 skeins of each color in the baggies. I have 2 of these bins in the closet.




The overflow of the overflow, in other words, those colors that I just have a crap load of... is still in baggies in a grocery sack and I use it to give away to people. I'm never going to use it so I might as well help other stitcher's when they need it. I'm never sure though if they want it or not as it is older floss. Nothing wrong with it but I worry people won't want it and use it. What do you think?


Are you still with me?? I hope so! Hang in there, I'm almost done.

Now I have to confess that when it comes to my overdyed floss storage, I haven't come up with a great solution. In fact haven't come up with any solution. Yet. A couple of friends of mine have suggested a system that they use and I think I will try to find it. My only problem is it seems to be getting harder and harder to find and I don't want to spend tons right now to make sure I have plenty for the future when I don't need a lot of it at the moment. I've considered doing something similar to what I've done with my overflow DMC and I've thought about having Dan build me a spinner. Still mulling it all over. If you have any brilliant ideas for storing overdyeds please let me know. For now, this is my method.


Not a great solution as you can see. Are you horrified?? I am! I'm open to suggestions on this one folks!

That pretty much covers my floss storage and since this is so long I will leave it with just the floss storage and post more on the craft room in a day or two. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me and I'll do my best to answer them.

I'm off to help a mother this morning whose son has just been diagnosed with Celiac disease. My daughter was diagnosed a little over a year ago and I wish I had had someone to walk me through the grocery store and point out what she could and couldn't eat, so when my sister asked me if I would mind I said I'd be happy to help. I'm not an expert but I'm better than nothing!

Thanks again everyone for all the lovely comments and stay tuned if you are interested for more of the craft room.

Have a great day!

It's done, it's done, it's done!!

Happy Tuesday Everyone!!

I am so excited to announce that my craft room is finished! Well, I guess it's not completely, absolutely finished as there are a few things I still need to get like another chair, a rug and some organization of the scrapping stuff but the actual construction stuff and getting everything back in there is finished. And it looks mahvolous darling, just mahvolous!! See....(click picture to make larger)


and....
I won't bore you with all the detailed pictures I took. I'm trying to make my posts shorter so that maybe someone will actually want to read them!

Got a bit of stitching done this weekend. Here's an update!


Thanks for stopping in. Have a great day!

I need your help, the dresser and my WIP

Good Morning!

I was looking at my blog this morning and realized it had been over a week since I last posted! Where did the time go?

I need your help. I have used all the resources at my disposal and have come up blank. You are my only hope Obi Wan. Oh wait, I got confused there for a second, I meant to say, you out there in blog land are my only hope. To finish part of my craft room I NEED to have one more 60 drawer cabinet with the clear drawers that men usually use to store nuts, bolts, screws and anything else that is lying around in the garage that they don't know what to do with. BUT, and this is the sticky wicket, it needs to be a certain size. Specifically, 14.5w x 14h x 6.5d. I can find ones that are 18" tall but that won't work. They no longer make the size I need. So in order to find one, it's going to have to be in some persons garage. I have searched ebay, craigslist, posted a message on craigslist asking for one, contacted all friends and relatives and now I'm throwing myself on your mercy. I am more than willing to pay a reasonable price for it and shipping costs to get it here. So please would you see if you have one that could be replaced with the stupid 18" tall one and let me know. And if you don't would you hound ask everyone you know to look too??? Pretty please with sugar on top? Here's a picture of one ( not the right one, mind you) that I have from my garage. Oh, and I don't mind if it's dirty, I can clean it up, it just needs to have all it's drawers and be fully functional. Thanks, I appreciate the help!


I've been pretty busy the past week. Last Tuesday I went to the dentist to get fitted for a crown and 2.5 hours later left with a partial root canal. Seems the dentist that put the original filling in cracked the tooth and drilled into the nerve or some such thing and so the pain was not going to be fixed with a crown. No siree, I needed a root canal. And because my roots extend into my sinus cavity, the dentist wasn't comfortable doing the whole thing so the next day I got to go to an endodontist and have him finish the root canal. Now, I don't know about you but I don't do the dentist well. I don't like the sounds, the smell, the taste or anything else that is involved in going to the dentist. Not even the stupid sticker or toy they offer you afterwards is enough to negate my feelings about the dentist. So you can imagine how I felt having to go 2 days in a row. BUT! Is it done after 2 days? No. It Is Not. It's now a week later and I am still surviving on pain killers and mush. I also have a canker sore on the inside of my cheek the size of Rhode Island. My eyeball hurts, my sinus' hurt, the roof of my mouth hurts, the tooth hurts, my ear hurts , well, I'm sure you're getting the idea. This happened with the last root canal they did also (different dentists) . They had to redo it twice that time. Correct me if I'm wrong but we have sent men to the moon, unmanned probes to Mars, invented the computer, the cell phone and all the other modern miracles in the last 100 years but for some reason, we can't seem to bring dentistry out of the dark ages!! That's just wrong. In so many ways. I'll keep you posted on what happens next.

Wednesday, before going to my second round of torture, I picked Amy's senior portraits up. This is another form of torture in my opinion. I have a certain amount of money I can spend on them and I am having a terrible time deciding which pictures to choose. Could be worse, there could be no good pictures to choose from but the back and forth, do I choose this picture or this picture is driving me crazy.

I've been working on the craft room this past week also. Not as much as I would have liked because I really haven't felt well but a few minutes here and few minutes there and it is starting to improve. Still a long way to go but I am hopeful that by the end of this next weekend it will be done. Dan finished up with that beautiful dresser I posted last time. Oh! That reminds me, as long as I'm complaining today, before I found this dresser at the thrift store I was looking for one on Craigslist. I was raised to believe that a dresser is a piece of furniture with drawers and is horizontal in shape and a chest of drawers was a piece of furniture with drawers and is vertical in shape. Apparently I am the only one that was raised to think this. And as I searched for a dresser I discovered a new pet peeve.....99% of people are selling what I call a chest of drawers but posting it under the title of dresser. Anyway, back to the beauty that we bought. Here she is today, all painted up purty with new hardware and placed in her new home in the craft room.


and with her new hutch installed on top she is ready for me to install all the scrapping stuff that she will hold!


Saturday was Last Saturday Stitching, held for the last time at the old shop. We're not sure where it will be next month, hopefully we will be up and running at the new shop if all goes well and will be able to have it there. We had 2 new stitchers join us Saturday, Sandy who reads my blog and her mom Jane. Very nice ladies, I didn't get to talk much to them as I was pretty busy most of the time but hopefully they had a good time and will continue to attend. I meant to take pictures of the day but in my drug induced state, I forgot.

My inlaws came down for the air show on Sunday which meant we had to clean house, sort of. More like a lick and a promise. I was somewhat embarrassed. Oh well. Life happens sometimes!

I've also been helping our son decorate his new apt. Picking paint colors, new light fixtures, curtains, art....last night Dan and I went over and hung his new blackout curtains. His TV was opposite the 8 feet of sliding glass doors which caused glare on the screen and we couldn't have that. I also rearranged a bit and hung some of his pictures. It's coming along nicely. Chose the paint color for his den last night too.

So as you can see I have been pretty busy which explains the lack of progress with my stitching. Here is the little I have managed to do. Pathetic isn't it? Any guess yet on what it is??


I need to get my day started. Breakfast so I can take more meds, phone calls need to be made, cleaning up so when Amy's piano students show up I'm not embarrassed and then the craft room. I hope you all have a great day and thanks for stopping in, commenting and hounding your friends for a cabinet. Sorry for the length of the post. I tried to be brief! :)

New wip, update and ummmm stuff

Good Monday Morning!

It was a very busy weekend. Still didn't accomplish everything that needed to be accomplished but progress was made and you can't complain too much about it. Well, you could complain but it isn't going to do you any good so why waste the time doing so?

Dan and I went over to Adams apt. both Friday and Saturday to check out the painting job he was doing, paint some for him and to discuss what was next. Adam is doing a great job with the painting for his first attempt! He is now finished with the main living areas and the hallways. I still need to pick paint for the den, bathroom, and bedroom. Just waiting on art and bedding and a shower curtain to arrive so I can get the colors picked based on those items. His blackout curtains arrived Saturday so I picked those up this morning after taking Amy to school. I think the color will work. Dan installed some new hall light fixtures also. Tonight after work he is planning to install the new kitchen light fixture. Right now it's just a big round bare bulb. Can we say yuck?!

Abby went to orientation for radiology school this morning. She was very nervous which is strange because the girl can get a brick wall to talk to her if she wants to. I think it's mostly a lack of confidence in herself. She doesn't think she's smart enough to do this. She is, but I can't convince her of it.

I want to give you all a sneak peek at the dresser we picked up at Goodwill this weekend. She's a beauty! I'll be putting a hutch on the top and it will go in the craft room that we've been working on in the basement.
Here's the front:


Another shot:

I was lucky to get these pictures, Dan was already working on the dresser by the time I got in the house, located my camera and got back out to the garage! Don't you wish you had a dresser just like this one? :)
Trust me, you won't recognize her when he's done with her!

We made some good progress on the basement this weekend too. Took a large load to the Goodwill, I started loading up the other closet in the craft room, bought some curtains for the nooks, and then some old friends decided to come out of the closet and play.

They were very happy to leave the confines of the closet after almost 5 years. These are mostly my vintage and vintage reproduction dolls, with a few glamor gals on the bottom.

Some stitching got done this weekend also. Not much though, too busy with other things. I started a shop model. I can't say that I am enjoying working on this dark brown fabric. I've had to frog quite a bit on it already. These eyes do not like dark colors anymore. I'm using my readers, my ott light and white fabric on my lap but holy moly I can't stitch for long on it before I have a headache! Anyway, can anyone guess what this is going to be? Bet ya can't!

and the chatelaine:


I guess that's all I've got to say for now. Not the most exciting of posts but that's the way it is sometimes!
Today is my last official day of work. Still not sure exactly what is going to happen. I'm praying hard and we'll see what comes of it!

Thanks for stopping in and commenting if you do! It's always appreciated!