I am soooooo blessed to have my craft room!
So, SO blessed!
…And believe me I count those amazing blessings daily!

My “Happy place” has become one of the most used rooms in the house. Not just by me – the kids love it & in the evenings when Neil is home he quite often joins me in here too to do his electronics “stuff”… (don’t ask me what that involves cause I just smile & nod 😉 ).

I love that we’re now such a family of creative peeps, it has become a great place to spend quality time together as a family and evenings in front of the tv are mostly a thing of the past.

But for quite a while now the set up of it has really been driving me crazy!
My drawers with sewing stuff in were spread out between 4 drawer units. Likewise so was my paper craft stuff, stationary & cutting machine stuff.
In other words everything has been looking relatively tidy on the surface, but really it has been disorganised shambles if you opened the drawers. There was soooo much stuff that I never even looked at taking up valuable space of the stuff I use lots of but had run out of storage for.
It was just not working for me, yet I’ve just been too busy to do anything about it!

But since I have intentionally reduced my work load already for the summer, (so that we can enjoy more family time together and prepare for the holidays) and I’m no longer manically busy, (just ordinarily busy) it was high time to get it all organised!

So yesterday that’s what I did…

Inspired by my friend Bec (who has a brand new blog so go say hello to her ) I was ruthless and culled a whole lot of scrap booking paper from before I started sewing that I knew I’d never now use.

I also completely rearranged and tidied every single one of my drawers (boy oh boy you should have seen the mess during the process of that!).
When all said and done I’d made myself 3 empty drawers. Yes – love that free space to fill heheh Don’t panic Neil – probably just to organise works in progress 😉 😉

I also designated Hannah her very own drawer. Into that went all of the stickers, glue, scrapbookpaper, stamps, ribbon, embellishments etc… etc… that Hannah is allowed full descretion with for her craft time. She is absolutely thrilled to bits to have her very own drawer within my office!
I figured that since it has become our habit for her to spend a couple of ours crafting with me every afternoon while Abbie sleeps (and I was becomming increasingly frustrated with her helping herself to some of my things) that it would be beneficial for us both for her to have her very own drawer.

She has already been heard to say “Mum! What are you doing in my drawer!”
hmmmm….
Don’t worry, we had words!

So today I have been able to sit and admire the organised space. Not that I’ve felt like creating anything in it (I’m a bit sick of the sight of everything after yesterdays mammoth tidy if truth be told) but I really doubt that will last for long!

This is what is now looks like:

Hannah proudly guarding her drawer
In front of her are my magnetic whiteboard and “her” workdesk (aka the one I have sacrificed to have pen etc all over) and behind her are my cutting/computer station or secondary sewing station, depending on what I’m working on at the time.

Oh yeah – and then of course there’s my fabric & book stash behind her too. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to play with tidy that yesterday *sigh…

That funny machine to the right is my heat press for sublimation & t-shirt making in case you were curious….

But I did tidy the actual sewing part. And finally hang some of my swap quilts on the wall! (They have been hung in random places up until now – all it took were some 3m hooks sheesh, not even that big a deal!)

My favourite side of the room obviously

I now have some of my latest treasures right around my sewing machine…

new pincushion, mini quilt & mug rug all from recent swaps

The rest of my cherished swap items are all dotted around my sewing room also. Including my shelf full of pretty little purses all received in swaps:

Thank you to Erin, Sylvia, Traci, Jeannie & Meg for these!! They all house various sewing notions.

And finally I must show you a couple of my favourite drawers to dive into. Since they took me the longest to play in tidy as well

My drawer full of thread, handsewing kits, purse frames & small rulers:

My drawer full of precuts and “special” scraps:

oooh la la! My favourite!

And finally – the drawer that really DID take me the longest… my drawer full of lace & ribbons:
(previously a huge mountain of chaos)

oh the time I spend winding that all on card etc…!

So there you have it: my newly organised & yummy happy haven for the crafter!
Hope you enjoyed your little tour.

Hmmm…. I wonder how long it will all stay tidy!

I probably should have saved all of this for our nosey parker in the neighbourhood features in Jan/Feb, but it will probably be all messy again by then!

Take care