Take a Peek into my Craft Room and A Tidbit About a Very Wonderful Grandma

Hey friends! :) I am feeling pretty darn good this morning so I thought I'd let you in to the room where all the creative magic happens, my craft room. There has not been a lot of crafting going on there lately as it's been kind of work-on-the-house-by-myself projects kind of month. John has been very very busy doing the things he loves and what little time he could spend with me at home, we usually spend going on day trips or antique shopping or just plain ole shopping for him mostly. I'm not good with going through racks unless I know exactly what I want and where to get it, I just get on my computer, click 'add to cart' and 'check out' then wait for them to come to me. :)

Okay back to my craft room.

It is currently a work in progress because my handy man is busy drumming. It's all about to end though. I think they only have one more month of competitions and parades. Yipee! And then,  maybe in the next few months or so, this craft room will be finished... Well, you know, for a while until I change my mind on some things and then we will be back and at it again.

This is what you see when you enter from the kitchen. There's a huge stack of magazines that I am going through on the left, they will be taken to the recycle center very very soon.

 

Meet my desk... There's been a lot of Project Life going on here, I also sew on this desk for now since my sewing station is yet to be built. But this table is so sturdy, it's not even funny. John built this thing to last.

 

My desktop by the way is almost 3/4 of a piece of plywood. It's pretty spacious, so spacious, all my junk is on top of it including the new adapter that Apple sent to me for my laptop FOR FREE because I panicked and I thought my charger broke! I called and told them, and they gladly said, we will send you a new one for free in three days. I love their customer service. Three days and tadah! I got a new adapter. And oh, my old adapter wasn't broken. Not sure what happened really and it wouldn't work, at least now, I have a back up one, right?! :)

 

And here is what John calls the "Pen Station" [pun intended! LOL] I do have a lot of pens and markers. I am a scrapbooker and crafter after all. I love to journal and doodle. I'm a girl and I like shoes and clothes but not as much as I LOVE shopping for new pens and markers. 

As for desktop storage, I am still on the lookout for some really cool, chic, good quality ones. I just don't have the heart to spend hard-earned money on flimsy storage especially the ones that I am going to be constantly moving or using...

 

To the right of my desk is this big window facing our front yard. This is where I get to watch people. Every so often, I get to watch my next door neighbor rinse out oil cans on the [sewer] grate, our neighbors are mostly old-er people, so they are bound to be very DIY-ish. They do their own oil changes. Also, I get to watch him clean out his paint brushes. So I pretty much know what colors they are in the mood for. They paint A LOT!  I have weird-er neighbors than that, but that's for another post! lol

This view just makes me happy. This photo was taken when it first rained after the drought all summer. So my berm looks a little sickly at this point. It doesn't look like that anymore.

If I was going to go outside, this is what I see. Pretty, isn't it?

 

And here's more of the tray of random pens and markers, ink pads, and other small tools I use pretty much all the time. Those two cups are both gifts from John. Unlike him, I use cups for storage not for coffee. :) In the background is my cube storage that someone is going to inherit when my built-in goes up that wall. Right now it's just holding a bunch of supplies and crafting tools I don't normally use all the time and seasonal stuff. It also holds little things that used to hang on my slot boards in the other house.

 

I love these cubbies! I bought these small Sterilite bins back in early August at the back-to-school section in Walmart. They were inexpensive and they fit so I loaded up my cart with six of them, made tags and voila! Storage! They hold adhesive, frequently-used clear stamps and punches, well everything that I use all the time really.

 

There's more storage planned on this side of the room. I am leaving it pretty much all blank because I don't want to be putting holes on the walls that I will later regret. All my pictures are hung on existing hangers or Command Strips. There's nothing more aggravating than filling in holes and patching them up. It's a lot of work!

 

And here's a view of the other side. This corner of the room has evolved so much in a mere three months! And it is going to evolve some more in the coming weeks/months soon as I get my handy man back.

 

Other than my storage search issues, I really have been loving crafting here. Like John always tells me, we are not cutting corners in this house, everything will be done right and we are not going to waste money on 'temporary' fixes, instead, we will save up and do it right the first time because after all it is OUR time and OUR money that gets wasted when we half-do anything. And I believe him. We've made those mistakes before. 

Coming from a place where help is not expensive, where everything that has to be done can be paid done, and a non-DIYing family, I believe I have done well! I've never worked so hard on something in my life as I have all the houses we have lived in. And the current house holds more meaning to us, but more importantly to John because this is his Granny's. He was very very close to her and her to him. So we are loving it like she would've loved it if she still lived here. Trust me when I say this: that woman had style! I know this from all the stuff we inherited from her. She had impeccable taste in furniture, and she took care of all of them too. She had no idea that all the time she put into taking care of her furniture would spare John and I  from all the expenditure of buying new [crap quality] furniture when we first got married! That is just one thing amongst all the many things that she has done [without knowing it!] for us.

I didn't get to meet her, she lost her battle with cancer a decade or so ago... but she is one who I have grown to love and adore through the family she has left behind, and most especially through the grandson  she so dearly loved who, I hope she knows has turned out to be a wonderful husband and friend to me. He is such a jewel!

Inheriting her house has been very emotional for John. Everything that we do here we do with so much care and we intend to do that for as long as we live here. :)

John's Mom always says, "I'm sure she is looking down at you kids with a smile on her face." 

I really hope she is.