Needles and Pens

It's Show and Tell day over at Kelli's House , and after weeks of blogging about my office/sewing room in progress, I'm finally proclaiming it finished . This project has come a long way , so for Show and Tell today, some pictures of my new room... The view, as you walk into the room: The "office" area: The "sewing" area: And where the two worlds collide, writing books meet quilting fabric: I'm sure there will be more little decorative touches to come, but here are a few items that just had to be in here right from the start. I made this mini-quilt to cover up the big hole in the back of my Freecycle desk: Wall space is at a premium in this room, but every office needs a few certificates on the wall. Here is my diploma from the Institute of Children's Literature , and my sixth-place award for a children's story entered in the 2001 Writer's Digest Writing Competition . Wow... has it really been that long? This little writer bear was a sp...

It's "Tackle it Tuesday" at Five Minutes for Mom . What are you tackling today? Finally, my sewing room/office project is nearing the end. Over the weekend, I moved my desk, file cabinet and computer into the new room. Is it ever crowded! Very den-like, and I don't mean the spacious, walls-lined-in-bookcases type den. More the small-cave-where-a-bear-might-go-to-hibernate type den. Cozy, it is. And by the end of the day, it'll be cozier yet -- but finished. Update - 10:30 p.m. I've decided to add my updates after each picture, with the text in red. Makes it easier to compare the "before" and "after" pics, I think. Hope it's not too confusing! With all of the crafting, sewing, scrapping and writing projects about to take place in this room, I'm in serious need of a work table. So I've hauled up from the basement an old drop-leaf table, once salvaged from a house that was about to be torn down. My big tackle for today is to give ...

Computers can take over your life, if you let them. I’ve noticed, increasingly over the past few years, that I spend an awful lot of time in front of the screen, much of it very unproductively; playing solitaire, reading email, blog-hopping, web surfing. Had I spent all of that time writing, researching, and finding markets, my writing career may be going somewhere other than the dusty back shelf. Even worse, all that time in front of the computer would have been much better spent interacting with my family. But it’s hard when the computer resides in your main living space. Beckoned by the ever-changing wallpaper and the promise of a friendly email at the click of a mouse, I’m drawn to the screen like a magnet. And if I’m not glued to the computer, one of my kids certainly will be. It's high time the spell was broken. And so began, “The Experiment.” I’ve spent weeks now, clearing out an unused bedroom, painting, decorating, organizing, until there was only one thing left to do; mov...

Well, getting all the quilting fabric sorted yesterday really helped to put my space into perspective. I spent just a few minutes looking over my sorted piles today, and I could see just where everything would fit. For the smaller pieces, I decided to make better use of my drawer carts. Now my cut scrap pieces are in the smaller upper drawers, and the lower drawers hold fabric. I even got labels on the drawers. Yeah! The larger pieces went on two unused shelves on my bookshelf. I'm not sure I like it being out in the open like this. On the other hand, it might just inspire me to get sewing! And the REST of my fabrics are in bins in the closet. I wonder if I can use all of this up in my lifetime??? Now I have just a few boxes of miscellaneous "stuff" to go through from my old sewing room, and my new sewing room will be set! Then it's finally time to move my desk and computer up there. Still not sure how I'm going to like that, but I'll never know unless I try,...

They're tackling all kinds of projects today over at Five Minutes for Mom. Click on the logo above to see what folks are tackling this week! As for me, I'm tackling this: Looks like fun, huh? This is all of the quilting fabric that I hauled from my basement yesterday, up to my new sewing room. It is complete chaos, and today I hope to change that. The plan is to sort everything by size and color, then decide where I'm going to store it all. My other fabrics are already in bins in the closet, but the quilting fabric is the most often used, so it needs to be easy to see and readily available for picking and choosing colors. I don't really have a solid plan yet, so this should be an interesting challenge. Update to come, later today. Stay tuned... Update: 7:00 p.m. Well, I didn't get it all done, but I did get the whole pile sorted by size and color. These are all the pieces one yard or more: Less than one yard: One bin of scraps, and another filled to the brim with ju...

Now that all the birthday and Valentine celebrations are over, I'm ready to get back to tackling my sewing room, one small bite at a time. Today, I'm sorting through the pile of notions and patterns in the corner and getting it organized into the white cupboard at the right. The drawer carts hold my quilting scraps, and I also need to decide where those are going to live: Once that's finished, I'm going to finally get this charity quilt top layered and pinned. Maybe even get started on the quilting, too. We'll see how that goes. Not only would it be a huge relief to get this quilt done, it would make just a little more space in my sewing room -- for more projects! So, I'd better get going and get it done, then I'll post an update later today. Update: 2:30 p.m. Where did all that stuff go??? Believe it or not, it's all in here: The top two shelves hold all of my sewing notions, with room to spare (no worries, it'll be filled when I bring up the rest ...

Yesterday I posted pictures of the finishing touches on my new office/sewing room. Now I would love to just dig in to organizing my sewing stuff and getting moved in there, but first I have to get my oldest son moved into his new room. This was previously my "sewing room," and I use that term loosly, as I never actually sewed in there, just piled it full of sewing stuff, which got repeatedly stirred and rarely put back away. Here's how that room looked yesterday... Ready?... Fun, huh? Makes you want to just jump right in and sew something... not! And that's just the view from the doorway. It gets worse as you plough your way through to the closet. Okay, so that was yesterday. Last night, my son, husband and I (mostly I) moved all the stuff out of there. The less-stirred bins and my storage cupboard went upstairs, the rest is piled in a heap in the basement's main room (to tackle another day). There are a couple more pieces of furniture to move out, but there is a...

At last, the new office/sewing room is ready -- move-in day tomorrow! Here's what I've finished since stripping the wallpaper last Tuesday: * Paint -- a creamy new color called Dusted Bronze. * Wallpaper border -- found on clearance at Menards for just $5.00 per roll. I would have preferred to hang it at the very top of the wall, but with only two rolls, had to go lower to make it around the whole room. * Lighting -- said goodbye to the Sesame Street gang, and opted for something more traditional. * Window treatment -- these are some paisley curtains I already had on hand, so they aren't exactly perfect, but I think they'll do fine. They sure add a cozier feeling to the room. The shades alone (also pre-existing) were so stark and cold -- and a little too blue! And that's the last of the final touches! I still hate the red carpet, but I guess if I get bored, I can dress up, stroll around the room, and pretend I'm an Oscar nominee. lol More likely, there'll ...

It's sloooow going, but I did get one wall painted today, so here are the new colors for my soon-to-be office/sewing room: I found the wallpaper border on clearance, and it had that little touch of red to blend with the gaudy red carpet, so it was perfect! (My first choice would be to put in new carpet, but sometimes you just have to work with what you've got.) I hope to be able to jump right on this project tomorrow and get the painting finished, then I can start moving in over the weekend. Yay!

I've been meaning to join in the Tackle it Tuesday meme over at 5 Minutes for Mom for quite awhile now. It just seems like a great incentive to get some things done around here, so today is my first Tackle it Tuesday entry! My kids' school is closed today, not for snow, but for extremely icy roads. We had an unusually warm day yesterday, followed by rain, which froze overnight. Thankfully, I have no errands to run today. But I do have a big project to tackle and I'm getting more nervous by the day about getting it done, as my son has been bringing his stuff home a bit at a time and its really beginning to pile up! It's actually an ongoing project, and if you like, you can read more about it here . SO, the project today is to scrape the old wallpaper off of my "office" walls. Probably one of my least favorite jobs in the whole wide world. lol Fortunately, the wallpaper only covers about the top two feet of the wall, on three walls. It took me days to get all of...

The room shifting project continues. This week, we've been working on sorting and organizing the toys in Tim's (my youngest) old bedroom, moving only the ones he still wants into his new room. Being the youngest of four kids is a mixed blessing -- for me, if not for him. For this child, there has never been a shortage of toys. In fact, almost every toy and book that ever belonged to the three older kids has eventually come to rest in his bedroom. Obviously, there's no one else around to take on the overflow, so it's time to do some decluttering! We decided first to tackle the hundreds of children's books (this picture shows just a small portion of the whole collection): Of all those books, these are the only ones he really wanted in his room: There was a much larger portion that I couldn't part with, so they went on a shelf in the basement. Some have special meaning, others will be good research material for my own children's writing. Notice, there's s...