Something About Nothing

I've had big plans in my head to do some major cleaning in the studio at the end of this month. My husband was going to a conference for a week and I figured I could pull everything out of the studio while he was gone and then only put back the stuff I wanted to hang on to. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for me, his conference went virtual. He encouraged me to go ahead, but I wanted to put everything in the bedroom and I knew it would need to be there at least overnight making it difficult to sleep. I decided I could clean out one small cupboard in my bedroom. This cupboard has been making me crazy for a number of years. A lot of stuff has just been shoved in there to get it out of the way.   Before I pulled it all out. There were a couple of surprises in there. The biggest surprise was this box filled with funeral cards. On the top of all the memories of my dead relatives was this business card: Cindy Kwiek: School of Dance.  I took everything Cindy offered! I was t...

The house has been NOISY this holiday season.  I realize this is a good thing because it means I have family who still wants to be at home. As the kids move out, our lives are changing and sadly this noisiness might not always be the case.  That said, I needed some alone time today!  How do you find alone time when the house is full? I decided to take to the after Christmas sales, because nothing says alone like shopping, am I right?!  I can be in my own little world and look at pretty things.  If I hear someone yelling for Mom, I don't need to respond.  Not my circus, not my monkeys! However there is a great danger in hitting the after Christmas sales alone.  It's a fine balance because while there is no one there to beg you to buy something, there is also no one there to reign you in! Now before you start judging -  It was all on sale at least half off, with most of it 70% off. It will all be used - some year. And believe it ...

After the holidays my studio was looking pretty messy. Leftover pieces of vinyl from the Christmas Ornament project were everywhere.  Bits from other projects had been shoved this way and that and then my Christmas gifts had been piled on top of all that.  Time, once again, for some organizing and cleaning. Thanks to a great sale at the local craft store, and a generous gift from my Mother-in-law, I was able to purchase some lovely drawers and find homes for my stuff.  There is now even a spot for my dress dummy.  I still need to come up with a name for her.  All of the drawers came unassembled and I spent almost an entire season of Torchwood putting them together! I think it was worth the time! I also added the extender into the table and turned my stash shelves to the side to make more room for the extra table space. Mister approves of the new wide open spaces. Although he also approved of the messes. He likes making himself at home any...

This was my daughter's room before it was messed up by her moving downstairs.  Cute little room. The room sat untidy like this until today when I decided I had the time and energy to move my studio in. Of course before I could move in I had to move the bed, nightstand and bookshelf out.  Once they were   out I moved this furniture up before lunch. The thread cabinet is HEAVY!   The drawers don't come out and I was too lazy to remove all the stuff because I believe the weight is from the cabinet, not my threads.  I had to "walk" the cabinet up the stairs, tipping from one side to the other to go up the stairs.  I was huffing and puffing by the time I finished bringing up just these 5 things. After lunch I took apart my big shelving unit and reassembled it upstairs. I started to bring up some of the tubs when it was suddenly time to pick up my daughter from school. I made  kindly asked my daughter to bring up the rest of...

The end of 2012 has been a bit rough; Full of ups (my sister's wedding, family home and the holidays) and downs (my sister-in-law dying after years of illness).  I am now putting on my rose-colored glasses and looking forward to a positive 2013.   I thought it might help me if I spent a few days posting some of my goals for 2013.   My first goal is to organize my studio.   Life has taken a toll on the tidiness of my studio, however organizing the studio has become a complicated process.  My husband and I decided that with our two youngest only having a couple years left in the house (we're counting on them moving out for college - one can dream!) we would let them move downstairs into the 2 larger bedrooms.  One of those bedrooms, however, is my current studio.  This means I will be moving the studio upstairs into one of the smaller bedrooms.  This bedroom is a little more than half the size of my current studio. The room is also st...

Life has been so busy with the holidays that I haven't had the time I would like in my studio and so when I had a free evening I had to decide:  sew or clean up and reorganize?  I posted the options on Facebook and the overwhelming response was SEW! But I just couldn't do it.   I had to reorganize.  There just comes a point sometimes when the creative juices cannot flow through the mess. I did resist the urge to tear the whole room apart, rearrange and reorganize. I cleared up the surfaces, put away things that had been piled here and there and then decided I needed a chalkboard, cork board and more organization containers.  (More about the chalkboard and cork board in another post)  Recently I read a great blog post on Art Camp for Women about how to make custom sized boxes to organize your art supplies.  I decided to try it out with my drawer of quilting threads.  They needed some reorganization anyway and it's hard to find boxes shallow enough...