A Closer Look at my Craft Room: It's Done... but not Quite!

Hey all! I am back and ready to show you what all has been going on here in the past couple of weeks. It's been kind of crazy around here with my friends' [Chris and Julie] wedding coming up in about two weeks plus the stuff we have been working on in the house.

Remember this photo from here?

Two weeks, later, it is now this!!!

I am pretty pumped about this really easy makeover that we did in my craft room. It's the best birthday gift so far! My husband is a giver, he would give me the moon if I asked for it. He is wonderful and awesome and is crazy enough to buy into my ideas. 

He was expecting for this whole makeover to cost $500 or maybe a little bit more. But guess what happens in March? ALL GOOD THINGS! Yes, indeed. The week after my birthday, we both spent our days comparing prices for materials online. We knew we needed 2 15-inch base cabinets, and a 30-inch base +  a 10 ft countertop. I was scoping the internet for coupon codes, printable coupons whatever I could scrounge to lower the cost because even if we had the money for this makeover, we weren't going to be dumb and be letting good deals slip through our fingers. We were better than that!

Enter a friend of ours who has decided to remodel her kitchen. She comes and tells me that she got a few cabinet pieces from Menards who was having a spring sale and the cabinets are on sale too. I got online and went to their website and found out this makeover was gonna cost half the price we were planning on spending. That night, John and I ordered what we needed and the next day, with a truck and trailer in tow headed to Menards to pick up the goods! :) Even the people at the store were pretty surprised how cheap it all cost. They kept asking John if that was really all he paid for the stuff over and over! 

Anyway, we got them home and got to work after doing our happy dance... [you don't want to see that!] Here's John measuring how much we were going to take off from the countertop. I think this was the same night we bought the cabinets. lol It doesn't take much to get him on work mode. Just buy him the goods! 

This was me the next day. John loves building and cutting and using his power tools... but he doesn't like to paint. Thank God I don't mind painting! :) The bookshelves on each end of the counter we got for free from John's parents. They were detached parts of this gigantic entertainment center that they weren't using anymore. 

I have painted so much in the past year and a half, I think I can paint with my eyes closed. These cabinets and bookshelves were nothing to do. I was armed and ready. I used Zinsser's Cover Stain [oil-based primer] and Sherwin Williams Dover White because I had it in hand and I wanted the whole thing to match the trim all over the house to make it look like it was there forever. :)

The insides of the bookshelves I painted that crazy pink at first. I thought it was going to grow on me. Sadly, it didn't. I found a sample can I had purchased a few months ago while I was deciding what to paint our guest bedroom. It's a dark teal and when I rolled that on there, I just knew it was meant to be. 

It took a good four to five days to get everything painted and get the paint to cure. This process takes so much patience. Take my advice, give the paint time to set and cure, otherwise, it will start chipping and peeling and cracking soon as you start using your cabinets. 

I cringed every time I walked into the mess! But I had to keep myself from slapping on a new coat of paint until the previous coat has dried. I just didn't want to be making repairs before I could start enjoying my space!

Here's John [above] helping me put the doors back on! I was so excited. Then we went to the home store to pick up some essentials. We picked up cabinet pulls, cabinet pull alignment guides, and the power hub on my counter. These didn't cost much.

The guides cost us about $6. They made installing the cabinet pulls a breeze. He had all 10 pulls installed in less than 20 minutes! :)

While he was doing what he was doing, I was on the other side of the room, working on this to give to his parents the next day. It was going to be their 41st wedding anniversary. I made this print a long long time ago. I just kept forgetting to get it done for them. 

This is the power hub from Le Grand that John picked up for me at the Home Depot. It took him but a few minutes to install it on my counter. The guy has tools coming out of his ears. So this was pretty easy. He also put a whole on the other side of the countertop so I can have access to the outlet underneath. My Silhouette machine is now sitting comfortably by it. The goal was for me to not to have to climb under the cabinets to plug anything in. He gave me all the comforts I needed! :)

And here she is again! 

The cabinets are pretty much empty. I am slowly going through my stuff and have purged and have been organizing for days now... and I keep finding more as I go. This is going to take awhile. I just need to keep going until I get to the end of this process so I can forge on to the other projects that John and I have going on. We have a couple other projects going on right now that we are trying to finish. We never sit down. Never.

Here's what's in the bottom of the bookshelf on the right.

Here's what's in the bottom of the left bookshelf. :) My fabric stash has a home now!!! 

See, this one cabinet has nothing in it. Not sure why the iron is in it either! lol 

This is as far as I got with the middle cabinet. I have old kits on this paper tower. 

The two middle top drawers have embossing materials, embellishments, copic markers, sewing kit, etc. 

This is the drawer on the far right. It has my thank you cards, camera straps, sewing machine pedal, and i don't know what else in it. lol 

But... my most favorite part is the 10 feet of workspace! :) 

Excuse the messy desk. It's Project Life time around here. I still can't get over the fact that we finally did what we always wanted for this room! This is going to be a work in progress for a while, given I do have some of my stuff stored in closets all over the house. Speaking of closets, my walk-in closet is next on the list. John has a mild heart attack every time he walks in there. lol 

Here's a close up of what's going on on this desk! 

Remember when I said we never ever sit down? Last night John and I were in here admiring the progress this room is taking, we found that we don't like that armoire sitting in the corner. He thinks that the sub-floor underneath that corner is loose because the armoire wouldn't sit level. It's not way off, but if you know my husband, he gets a little over-dramatic about un-level surfaces. I know he is going to want to fix this. At the same time, he is saying that we ought to move the armoire  on the other side so we can maximize the space and add like a corner desk or a place where I could cut fabric. 

I think it's a brilliant idea, but for now, I just want to enjoy my space. Maybe in the fall we can revisit it  and do something about this corner desk/fabric cutting area. :)

This is my most favorite spot in the world! It is mine and my ideas come to life in this room. This is where everything that is pretty that is in this house and that comes out of it is made. 

I am so thankful that I have a husband who understands the importance of having personal space and a place where I could be me, no holds barred, make messes and not worry about the paint splatters on my desk or my stuff. Most importantly, I don't have to craft from totes, bins and share a space with John anymore [he does have a pretty rad music room by the way that I put together for him! So don't be fooled by his puppy eyes! lol] He also is in the process of putting his very own techy home recording studio together so he isn't doing too bad. 

I love that this room has a window that faces west. I get to watch the sun set every single day in here. I love the warmth it brings in.  I just love windows and natural light, period. It's the only way I would photograph anything. 

So there you go, folks. I hope you enjoyed your trip to my craft room. :) 

See you again soon!

Right now...

... I am in the process of adding more storage and work space in my craft room.

... While one room is getting all fixed up, a couple of rooms in my house are getting all junked up because I had to pull some stuff out of my craft room to have some floor space to work in there.

The eat-In part of my kitchen all loaded up with stuff

Part of our living room

Even the foyer is not exempted

... I am a germ-o-phobe. Notice the bottles of anti-bacterial cleaners all over the house? I only become this crazy person during the cold seasons when the flu virus is hovering.

... There is no crafting in my craft room at the moment and it is really killing me. But like a good sport, I  am thinking positive and I am thinking, it has to get worse before it gets better. *winks*

... Even in the middle of this huge mess, my heart is full. I am very grateful for all the good things even for the not-so-good things that have happened and are happening in our lives [John and I both].

... As all this work is going on, I am also seeking God's guidance and wisdom regarding the direction I am supposed to go with my ministry. 

... Life is good. I am putting all kinds of energy into my house, making it all pretty and ready for spring. So come the warm months, I can enjoy being outside and bask in the sunshine. I am also looking forward to opening our pool.

... I am not quite liking the fact that it is cold and it snowed all day yesterday and all night, because it is spring after all, but I am thankful at the same time because I do have a lot of work to finish inside. The snowmageddon has bought me some time. *winks*

... I am/we are so thankful for everyone that we have been blessed with. We truly are very blessed, if not spoiled. We have the best family and the very best friends.

... Speaking of family, it is my in-laws' 41st anniversary today. :) Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!

See you all soon. Hopefully when I get back on, my craft room is ready to show off!

Laterz,

Today {Random Thoughts and Facebook}

Time is flying by so fast. My birthday was here before I could establish a really strong birthday wishlist!!! I was just talking to my Mom-In-Law about looking at a few brands of bread machines, and then a few days later, the bread machine I had my heart set on shows up at my door [from her and my Dad-In-Law] because I am not a very spoiled girl. No, not at all. *winks* 

Seems like it wasn't a long time ago when John re-did one of the bedrooms in our old house and turned it into a craft room for me for my anniversary gift. This year, he is building some more for my craft room in our new house for my birthday. :) Seems to me like we keep starting over, but we also keep upgrading. Each time we start, it is always some place better.

Around this time each year, John and I are usually building a list of things to do in the spring all the way up to the fall. This year, however, there isn't much to do. At least not anything major. It's all little things here and there, but knowing my Husband, one of these projects we got planned is going to turn into a major makeover.

I cannot wait to get this wall filled up with storage. This is the current state of my craft room. There has been a lot of activity here lately, so I don't even bother to do much of putting away, just until our friends, Chris and Julie get married in April. I am kind of helping them with some stuff for the wedding, plus all the other crafting and sewing that I do here.

 

John is getting ready to put a built-in on this wall so I can put away pretty much all of what you see on the floor. There's not a lot, everything else is put away, so this 13.5 feet built-in storage unit will come in very handy when he's done with it. This is #1 on my birthday wishlist and I am getting it in the next couple of weeks! I am very excited.

It will also add some work surface, which would be fabulous! Don't get me wrong, I love the gigantic desk he built for me last summer. However, at this point in my life I just don't paper craft anymore. I make pretty much everything. I sew, I take pictures, I make home decor, and not just for me anymore either. I have friends that come over and play in here every so often. This room gets more traffic than my kitchen does and my kitchen is pretty darn busy all the time, given there is always something baking or cooking in there or a cake or cupcakes are being decorated there constantly.

Enter this hutch...

 

We got this hutch years ago. It looked really good in the past few houses we've lived in, but it isn't looking too hot in my current kitchen. This is why it's been sitting here empty for a couple of weeks. I can't quite convince myself that I like it or I want to keep it at all. The only thing that is keeping me from taking an axe and destroying this thing is the fact that it is built good. It is an antique. So I am spending a couple of warm days to get it to my liking, otherwise, it is out the door. 

This armoire on the other hand is a keeper. This used to house our computer, it is now the house for my die cutting machines, my wireless printer and other things I don't use all the time. I am not sure if I want to re-do it yet, we'll see...

I am tackling this wall very soon. The canvas print is going to be finished too.

 

Lots of little things on my to-do list. Here's hoping it warms up soon so I can finish all of them and I can fly out of here for a while and visit some really important people who I haven't seen in a few years.

Speaking of wanting to see some people, this year for my birthday, I decided I would shut my facebook timeline posting down. I love social media. I connect with a lot of my family and friends there. While it is true that you can connect with people there, it is also the most impersonal place to hang out at. Although I know that there are people that love me and vise versa on there, there also people on there who just say things just because it is easy, not because they mean what they say.

So this year, I made sure nobody can post HAPPY BIRTHDAY on my timeline... and it was awesome!!! One, my phone didn't blow up from all the happy birthdays. Two, my timeline didn't get flooded with greetings from people I don't normally talk to. Three, all the people that really care, found a way to get a hold of me and didn't grumble because they couldn't post on my timeline.

It's crazy how I say it is the most impersonal place to hang out at but people take everything that they read or see on there very personal and get upset about things that most of the time have nothing to do with them.

This year, I promised to myself to make it a point see or personally talk to all the people I love. I am not quitting facebook, however, it won't be my major hang out, it never was in the first place. There is more to life than staring at our computers all day and creeping on other people's facebook pages. Make something pretty. Get a hobby. Learn to do something. Go outside and enjoy the sunshine. As for me, I am going to visit the ones I haven't seen in forever... because seeing pictures of them on facebook just doesn't quite do the job! :)

See you soon!!!

Week in the Life

I started a new project. It's called Week in the Life. I follow Ali Edwards' blog and I love how she has developed these systems that are easy to work into daily life. I used to be a 12x12 scrapbooker, but I just couldn't find the time to think about design, layout, etc. It was just a lot to think about so I was more than excited to find Ali in the blogosphere. :)

Week in the Life carries the Project Life concept of simply filling in pockets with pre-sized photos, journaling cards or filler cards except it looks at the more routine-ish stuff in your day. In my case, you will probably see a lot of photos of my craft room, the projects I am working on, photos of my hand while I sew, or paint swatches because this is me, and this is how my days go. I spend most of my days creating or imagining or planning if I am not with my Aunt Betty.  [the beauty of not having children... yet! is there is a lot of time to spend on creativity and such!]

I started last week. I downloaded and printed the daily sheets pdf. It's free so print away. And I went to town with all the information and snapped photos like I always do. I have been using my phone a lot lately since it is the most accessible, it is always with me. Even the photos in this blog post are from my phone [I have the Samsung Galaxy S3]. I use Camera+ and Camera Zoom fx. I love both apps. I know you can get Camera+ for the iPhone and the iPad and Android phones but I am not too sure about Camera Zoom fx for the iPhone. I edit my photos with Snapseed, it's what I use all the time and I highly recommend it.

The binder I'm using is from Sn@p Studios by Simple Stories. It is 6x8. Much smaller than my Project Life album, which makes it very manageable and less time consuming given there aren't as much spaces to fill. As for the jounraling cards, I just used the leftovers of the free printables I downloaded and printed at home. All the rest of the elements are either applied to the photos digitally using supplies from my digital stash, or manually stamped. I own a good amount of Studio AE stamps thanks to all the coupons from my favorite craft stores both online and in-store. I get most of mine from Archivers.

 

My husband, John and I send text messages and/or emails back and forth during the day... Everyday. Before he quit smoking, he used to call me at lunch but when he quit [seven months ago], we stuck to just texting and emailing since he has no reason to go outside anymore. It's like second nature to us. We have been doing this even before we got married. So I had to include screenshots of our SMS conversations or emails especially that we had the most interesting conversations last week.

 

A part of me is enjoying this creative clutter that I have going on [on top of my desk] and a part of me is just cringing and wanting to just clean it all up! But it has been almost two weeks of creativity around here. I like a good balance of activity, I hate monotony. So I change things up every so often and it has done me good so far. I am never without anything to do. Even when I watch TV I'm either crocheting or journaling or working on an art journal spread... thus the accumulation on my desktop.

Up there in the photo is Asta, he is the family dog. My Mom and Dad-in-law live just a few blocks away from us, we see them quite often. But last Saturday we had to be there especially for a birthday party and because I had promised Mom I would help her with her coffee-table-into-ottoman-transformation since I had done it before here. Soon as I sat the cushion down into the coffee table, Asta jumps in and never leaves! And then the next day my Mom-In-Law sends me a photo of him laying on it again as she was watching TV.  He is such a doll!

 

I still have a couple of photos to add for Sunday but this is what Sunday looked like around here. It snowed early that morning. I made red velvet cupcakes with a chocolate ganache filling and cream cheese frosting for the superbowl party we hosted. We have been hosting it for the past 3 years if memory serves me right. It's always a great time and the food is always good. The women hang out in the kitchen and gab while the men watch the ball game. This year was spent planning what our friend, Tina is doing to her kitchen. She is a DIY enthusiast and she has an eye for design.

All in all, the whole week has been great and I love that I started Week In the Life. I love looking through the pages a few weeks/months later. Maybe this week I will be able to clear my desk of all the "creative clutter" and start making a new mess.

Laterz gatorz,

Project Life 2013

Hi all! It is a cloudy, but warm day here. It feels weird to see 65 degrees on my weather app given that we are in the middle of winter. When these things happen though, I do get tempted to put summer clothes on only to be let down the next day or so because we will be right back down to the 30's, if not, even lower temps!

Since the weather has kind of been yucky since Sunday, I have been doing most of my work in the craft room and getting caught up with stuff, especially my Project Life album. I have been doing a lot of editing and resizing in the past couple of days. It's usually fun if you only have like five or ten photos but when you have more than a hundred, it sucks! And it only gets worse  when you are like me, I get into this zone where so suddenly I get action-crazy. So I get stuck staring at my computer screen for at least three hours editing and resizing photos. But that is just the nerd inside me. I love making use of my gear until they all fall apart. I get my money's worth [well, really, my husband gets his money's worth] that way. He is my very generous financier. *winks*

I have been a scrapbooker since I learned how to glue things into stuff. Although I didn't know what to call the stuff I was doing to my composition books and planners in high school, I have been an art journaler! My friends and I would draw random shapes in random colors on each page and just go crazy with them until we fill the whole spread up. It's just sad that I never did keep any of the books. They didn't have any value to me then because it was just an outlet to let certain feelings out. And, I was in high school, and young and reckless. 

It was in college when I got into scrapbooking. For some reason, I am drawn to very creative people. Towards the end of our college gig, we decided we were going to build a scrapbook of our experience as obeservers and student teachers, document all of our community  outreaches [this is a requirement back home], and just put into words all that we felt in the last five years. However, we didn't get to keep them either because the college dean thought it was such a great idea that we did that so to have examples for future students she kept them. My college buddies and I were pretty tight with our College Dean. She kind of mothered all of us all through the five years we were there. 

I am still a scrapbooker to this day, however, I have found a system that really really works for me, Project Life. And this time, I am keeping all the books! :) It was kind of hard in the past few years to get any scrapbooking done, because we were either moving or renovating the house or doing other stuff. I had known of Project Life since it came out because I am a nerd and I am constantly on the internet looking for new things to try. But I didn't commit to it until my birthday last year. I vowed to never waste a moment.

 

I started doing it weekly like most, but I found that it was more comfortable for me to do it pretty much every three months or every season [summer, fall, winter and spring]. The only down side to it is that you do get a lot of photos to edit and print if you are like me and just keep RAW files on my computer until it's time to put them in the book. 

 

I love Project Life because it will work no matter if I do it weekly, or monthly or  daily. It is also easy. Last year, when I started I really didn't buy the core kit. I just ordered the page protectors and got to work. I used my digital scrapbooking stash to digitally make my journaling cards, fillers and title cards to keep the cost low while I am still seeing if I was going to stick to it or not. It required some work, but I was willing to do all that to keep from investing on something that I will eventually quit. But after almost a year of  doing it, I have decided, I am sticking to it.

  

I don't take photos just so I could look at them on my computer or post them on facebook, or keep them in flickr or the iCloud. I take them because they reflect what life looks like to me at the moment, they tell a story about how I am feeling at a certain day and what we are doing to our house or why we are changing or keeping things. It is my life. It is John's life and mine mashed up in a book of photos and funny, sometimes sad, and mostly crazy stories on the side without worrying about composition, page design or what elements to use. I just get out what I think I need, I stamp here, I stamp there and, voila! All of summer is done! I also do a lot of die-cutting, heat and dry embossing... because this girl is a tool addict.

 

There are also a ton of free stuff out there, like the journaling card above, I downloaded that for free as PDF files and you just print it and cut them out. They are pre-sized to fit the pockets so there's no measuring involved.

The stamps I use, I already own. I am very fond of Ali Edwards stamps, you can get them from Technique Tuesday or Archivers [both the stores and online]. I usually get mine from the store, every time I get a coupon in the mail, I am there buying Studio AE stamps. :) But really, you can use whatever you already have, there are no rules. 

 

I enjoy outsourcing, but I do print almost all of my photos at home to save me time and money. I have an awesome CIS (Continuous Ink System) that I got last year right before I started Project Life. We got a new wireless Epson Artisan printer to replace the older all-in-one Canon that we had. It wasn't wireless and when we switched from PC to Apple computers, we saw no need to be hooking up anything to our desktop so we saved up some money and got a good wireless Epson printer. :) But right before we went through the ink tanks that came with our printer, my inner nerd kicked in to gear and got to looking for a much affordable way to print at home because when you are married to a teacher, worse, a band director the printer never sleeps! But that's okay, because that's what we got the printer for in the first place.

So in my search for the best way to be printing at home, I bumped into the CIS systems on amazon. Our printer has 5 tanks. To buy all of them it was gonna be around $80-$100 for the good quality ink. Whereas if I bought the CIS system, it would cost me $40 [on sale price] upfront and maybe that will be it for a while just until it is time to refill. So soon as I saw the price go down from $79 to $40, I jumped all over it. One year later, we are still 3/4 of the tanks full! And the pictures come out absolutely like they were supposed to. The CIS system by the way is composed of tanks that sit right by your printer, they hold all the ink, then it has these little adjoined tubes that go into the cartridges in your printer. It's like I.V. for your printer if that makes sense! lol It is best for printers whose cartridges do not travel or move while a print job is being done. The cartridges in our Epson Artisan printer are all stationary so it works for us.

I just make sure that I buy the Epson photo paper. This is one thing I don't actually cut corners with. I have tried many photo papers before and so far the Epson brand is the best, in my opinion. I get them from Amazon. It also helps that I have a Prime membership so I get them in one or two days. :)

However, if you just want to order photos, I personally love Persnickety Prints. I've ordered digital 12x12 pages from them before and the prints were awesome! :) But if you are in a hurry, going to the drugstore won't hurt either plus they also give you coupons with your print orders. So that works too.

For some, it may be a hundred different things, but for me, memory keeping keeps me aware of what's going on around me. Looking through all the photos and reading all that I wrote makes me thankful, it reminds me about how good I have it compared to other people. It makes me happy to see that I have been blessed with all these wonderful people in my life. Memory keeping most of all keeps me humble. Looking back five or six years ago, John was in the pits and given that I was married to him, I was in the same place as he was. How we crawled out of that hole was by the grace of God. And how we got to where we are now, is a miracle worth celebrating every single day.

 

My books do not just consist of good times... There are bad times in it too, except most of those go into my art journal that no one has seen. 

John and I have come a long, long way. Looking through all the books from years past, gets me teary. Everyone always told us we make a good team, and we didn't believe that until we pulled ourselves out of the rut we were in. It also helped that along the way, we have met such great friends who have pulled for us since day 1 and with the support of a great family, there was no way we were losing  any battles. :) And I am soooo glad I documented all that because every time I get to feeling awful, I look through my books and I feel fine... Whatever it is that was getting me down, I knew, it, too, shall pass like everything else we have had to go through.

So for the year 2013, I am set. I did order the core kit this time for a more cohesive look. I am still going to do it three months at a time because this works well with my schedule. This doesn't mean I won't be taking pictures every day because that is like NOT eating to me! lol I may however change the way I print my photos, I will probably start printing at a regular basis so I don't get stuck with 158 photos to edit and resize all at the same time.

Memory keeping is so fun because it IS a form of counting your blessings. Can anyone be any more thankful when you are saying it with pretty paper, some artistry, great heartfelt writing and awesome photographs? I don't think so. *winks* 

Bring it 2013!