Man, I love three day weekends. I also love the end of the school year. I still have two more weeks to work until my summer break but they will be two very productive weeks. I have something very exciting planned.
But before I get to that. We had a little mini vacation this weekend. One of my friends got married on Sunday at a beautiful venue in Southwest Missouri. I was one of her bridesmaids so it was a super crazy weekend. We went to the Dixie Stampede in Branson for the rehearsal dinner. We stayed at the Hilton on Branson Landing and got upgraded to an amazing room because our original room had a leak and wet carpet. We played glow golf. And had wine. A few pictures from the weekend.....
With the beautiful bride
The beautiful bride and me. And my husband's finger (???)
Me and my husband. He was amazing while I was busy off doing bridesmaid duties. Best hubby ever.
It's not an event without lots of long arm shots. Check out that bling. Love it.
But today it's back to the real world. And that means work. I'm clearing out my office to paint. Gotta fix those crazy two tone walls. Not two tone in an intentional way. Two tone in a touch ups with the wrong paint color kind of way. Sigh. It's going to be gorgeous though. And I have some fun decorating plans. I don't know if all the decorating will happen this summer or not until the fall when I come back but I will definitely be back with pictures post painting. But here's a reminder of what I've been staring at for the past two years.....
If you look at the top of simply and pay special attention, you can see how different the paint colors are. Also, there's tons of tack holes and scuffs. Not cute. And I'm changing up my bulletin boards. I'm so excited!
What did you guys do over the weekend? Hope you got some amazing relaxing done. And maybe a couple projects. I think we're getting ready to tackle a couple of outside projects at our house in the upcoming weeks.
I'm not sure exactly how. But somehow I'm all of a sudden done with the great office reorganization. I thought I still had a lot to do, turns out most of what was left was taking out bags of trash and bags of donations. Five bags all together. And I still have a bag of paper to take to recycle. Sheesh, can we say hoarder? But man, it feels good to be done.
I didn't end up really even having to buy anything new. I think I spent a grand total of nine dollars. Yes, really just nine dollars. No, it wasn't a complete overhaul. No, it doesn't look like it's out of a magazine, but it's practical and I think it will be easy to maintain. So where did I spend my nine dollars? I bought four mini buckets and five bins from the Target Dollar Spot. There's still a little styling to be done, but at least the organization is done.
So, in case you forgot, here is the mortifying, I can't believe I am showing you, before picture.
Eek, why am I still showing you that horror? Last night when my husband got home, he even commented on what a disaster the office had been. Geez. So, without further ado.... BTW, I'm still totally blown away that I'm done. I still can't figure out how it all came together in one last run at it. I'm not complaining though, because as I finished, the last episode of Glee available on Netflix wrapped up too. So, here we go. First I'm going to show you my drawers. And I just laughed a little because I'm immature.
The drawer of crafty goodness. What's in the bins? Beads are in one, clothes pins and magnets in another, and chipboard letters are in the third. There's also a bag full of more beads (I may have a problem). And a spindle of CDs that contain wedding pictures, CD sleeves and a calculator.
This drawer is sew much fun! Ack, I'm terrible today. This is left over fabric/scraps, a bin of sewing supplies, and a baggie with embroidery floss and buttons.
The newly organized closet. Sitting in the floor we have wrapping paper, a milk crate with more paper goods, and my ridiculous hoarder amount of yarn. Up on the shelf are boxes with keepsakes in them. There's also a box full of ribbon. And a Rubbermaid full of bottlecaps (left over from those bottlecap trays). Hanging on a hook in the closet is a bunch of Thirty-One bags. And hanging on the closet door is a shopping bag full of gift bags.
So, what's in that pink milk crate in the closet? Big mailing envelopes. A variety of scrapbook paper. A ton of card stock. A card making kit. And a three hole punch.
The bookshelf. I have way too many books for the shelf, that's why there's overflow in the milk crate. Keepin it classy. On top of the shelf are my ribbon jar and paint storage. I still think my paint storage is my favorite part of the office.
And a view of the whole office. So organized and fantastic.
I'm still at that point of walking by the door and being completely in love with my organized office. It makes me so happy. What I'm not showing you a picture of is my embarrassing CD rack. I got it as a gift in college. It's tipped over a couple of times and now it has a serious lean. It's pretty bad. But I have plans for that. I'm dreaming of a six drawer (or bigger) dresser for our living room to put a new TV on (when we get one anyway). I'm envisioning storing movies and music in the additional drawers and getting rid of that ridiculous CD rack. Ug.
So, how are your winter organizing projects going? Anybody else find themselves all of a sudden done?
Okay, first off, my clever title got me sidetracked. Once upon a time I took dance. For like ten years of my life. We did competitions and the like. One of my competition pieces was a duo with another girl. We had clown costumes. Not like dance costumes that cutely looked like clowns. Actual clown costumes. I wish I had a picture. It was hilarious. So, for your entertainment, here's a little video with the song. Unfortunately there is no video footage to prove we did this dance. Just trust me.
You're welcome.
And now back to normal. Ish. I'm slowly chipping away at the office/craft room. I'm still having problems figuring out what to do with everything, trying to come up with an organization system that will work well and will be easy to maintain. Yesterday I was a Target buying a new iron (my old one had a small incident and um, it needed to be replaced). So I stopped by the Dollar Spot and grabbed some storage bins. Specifically four little buckets and five little bins. I figured it would give me a good start.
So I went home and transferred all the supplies that had been in random containers - a coffee mug, plastic cups, and a decorative box - to my new matching buckets.
What do I store in my buckets? From left to right: pens and markers; paint brushes and crochet hooks; scissors; and hole punches and wire cutters. Yes, I have multiple pairs of wire cutters. Sheesh. These may not stay lined up here on the desk, but at least it's a start.
And I've started organizing the drawers to go back into my drawer organizer. I think the front of the drawers are eventually going to get covered in scrap book paper and made a little cuter. But for now I'm happy to have at least one drawer organized. So this is the paper supplies drawer.
In this drawer is my stash of cards. Most of these are just blank cards. There are also Christmas cards (that I do not remember buying), thank you cards, and a few party invitations. A big box of invitation envelopes, I had two boxes that I combined. These are leftover from wedding save the dates, and well, it's always good to have that size of envelope on hand. Then there's the tub of sticky stuff - glue dots, scrapbooking squares, scotch tape, double sided tape, masking tape, and glue sticks. It's so nice to have these all grouped together, that way they're not all rattling around the drawer and I can easily see what I have without having to dig. There's also a stamp pad, a few stamps, and a couple of paper punches. And it's totally easy to look in and see what I have. Love it!
I mentioned before that I had organized my paint. Well, with no overhead light in our office, it's next to impossible to take a good picture. Especially since it's practically dark by the time I get home. But, we'll just pretend this pictures looks fine, okay?
So, the paint on my lazy susan is organized by color. The top shelf has tubes of paint (those are not organized by color), big bottles of paint, and all the blues, greens, and purples. The bottom shelf is definitely organized by color. Whites, yellows, reds, and black/grey. Duplicate bottles (or bottles that are a very similar color) are behind the outside row. I am so in love with this update. The paint used to all be in a drawer in the closet. It was so hard to see what I had and know if I had what I needed for a project or not. Now it's all out at eye level and I can tell exactly what I have.
In the tall jar I'm storing all my curly ribbon. Once again, it's great because I can see what I have. It's also pretty and colorful. And the best part is, neither of these projects cost me anything. The lazy susan was a leftover from our kitchen. The jar was a gift for Christmas.
The office is nowhere near being done, but I love seeing little areas starting to come together. How are your winter projects coming along?
Okay guys, get ready for some truly horrifying before pictures. And ever worse, there are no beautiful before pictures. I'm still working on that. So, I'm warning you. It's seriously an embarrassing, hot mess. A true disaster. While, I'm being honest.... This is not the first major office/craft room overhaul. And it's because I'm a slob. Maybe it's more that I'm lazy. I know, I started working and blogging about this on Monday. But it's going to be a process.
The problem boils down to me not putting things away. I am so much more likely to put things away if I have a good, practical storage system. Like the bathroom overhaul. It has totally stuck. It's easy to keep things put away in there because everything has a home and things are easy to put away. I mean, my flat iron is almost always on the counter, but that's really the only thing out of place. It gets used every day though and put away for company.
In the office, I go in and grab supplies for a craft project, then I go to the living room to work because the office space is such a disaster I don't want to spend any time in there. Then when I'm done I just throw my supplies back in, they never get put away. The desk is covered with bottles of paint and random crafting supplies. Papers are laying on top of and near the file cabinet, waiting to be filed. There are books scattered everywhere. My CD rack (yes, I still have one) is tilting dangerously to the side. After too many moves and falling over a couple of times, it's not in the best shape. Don't believe me? Here are the pictures to prove it.
To be honest, I'd already started working when I took my pictures. The laundry basket is usually in the closet. It's filled with yarn. Yes, that whole basket is full of yarn. The drawer sitting in the chair is supposed to be in the drawer thingy that has previously lived in the closet. And please excuse the terribly lit pictures. Our office is next to impossible to photograph well.
So, do you have a room that's an absolute disaster? How do you organize your crafty supplies? Do you have a great system you want to tell me about?
I'm a huge slacker. I admit it. The holidays threw me off a little in blogging. And my office/craft supply storage is an absolute disaster area. It's truly embarrassing. I mean you can barely walk in. I got a tiny bit of a start on it tonight. I have one of those cheap-o plastic storage drawer things. Well, in my cleaning out, I broke two of the wheels. But I completely emptied one drawer out. Success!
Where did I put the stuff from that drawer? Glad you asked! I had an old two tier lazy susan leftover from our apartment kitchen. It was just stowed away in our basement with nothing on it. So I pulled that out and now it's holding all of my craft paint, organized by color of course. I also stored glitter and glue on the top. I wish I could say this was an original idea. It wasn't. But, it still made me feel pretty clever. I saw this amazing idea on Pinterest. Her storage solution actual came from Harbor Freight but I went with what I had. No sense buying something when I have something sitting around that would actually work.
And I have bigger and better plans for my sad little storage drawers. First I'm going to yank those wheels off. Then it's getting the star treatment. Okay, I don't know if plastic drawers can really get a star treatment, but I'm going to make them prettier either way. I think we're going to get a coat of spray paint on there first. And then I'm thinking some scrapbook paper. Like this.
So the office still isn't pretty. Sadly this is the second office overhaul since we've moved in. I just need to figure out storage solutions that work. It's a room I just struggle with. I suck at putting things away in there. Maybe it's because I know it's not a permanent office/craft room. Some day it will be a room for one of our kiddos when they come on the scene. But I need to use it for what it is now and not keep waiting for the future. Because in the present, it's driving me bonkers.
Anybody else have a serious disaster area for a craft/office? Any great storage solutions you want to share with me so I can quit closing the door when company comes over?
