A little bit craftier

After spending the better part of the last 4 months decluttering & tidying up the house and developing a routine for cleaning that actually works, I’m finally getting around to the point that there’s time in my schedule to do a bit of crafting each day. Here’s what I made a couple days ago:

Part of it is that snowman that I had so much trouble photographing. Part of it is a little collage Greg and I made of paper and sidewalk chalk and glitter glue. The rest is an old frame that had seen better days and yet more glitter glue (plus a little sheet of paper that says “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow). It hangs in my back hallway across from the Kid Command Center.

Speaking of the Kid Command Center, let me introduce you to that as well:

We’d been having our family calendar in the front hallway, kids school notes on the fridge, our chore lists (now just called “dailies”) in the back hallway, and it was all confusion! So we made a Kid Command Center (why yes, we are a house full of boys!) in the back hallway by their rooms. I used an old bulletin board that had four frames around it that no one ever used (the board is too small for my uses in the craft area). The frames hold a list for each kid of their dailies (which just sounds better than chores, right?). Each kid has a slightly different list, according to age and need. Since they’re behind glass, we can mark things off daily with a dry erase marker, which makes me happy in so many ways (no more printing lists! save the trees! oh my sanity!).

I also have my Must Do list up there. We had a funny moment when I was trying to shrink our lists down to fit and mine kept overflowing out it’s frame. One of the kids said “Mommy, your list is sooooo long! Is that why you’re always tired?” *sigh* Mine now has two entries that basically say “Do one thing from the weekly/monthly list.” Other things on the lists: piano, scout activities, Bible time, personal reading for everyone, picking up toys (which already needs to be rephrased to “Pick things up off the floor” not just toys, as the boys now have more shoes than I do).

Yesterday I started the process of moving out of the craft room. I know, I know. I was so excited to have a craft room, but you know what? I realized one day that every time I go to do some kind of craft or to make a gift or something, I go into the craft room, gather up my stuff, come out into the living room or my bedroom or the kitchen and do my work there. The craft room idea would be great if a) it wasn’t so ever loving dark in there and b) I didn’t feel like I was stuck away from everyone. And yes, I did try lamps (Nick got me a cute little task light that I love) and letting the kids bring stuff in to do while I was in there. But what happened was that the room turned into the dumping ground room. So yesterday I cleared all the junk out of my grandmother’s desk, put all of the craft supplies that I found elsewhere around the house (the ones I use on a daily basis, I guess, since they weren’t in the craft room) into it, then grabbed my big wheeled cart that I thought was full of supplies and started emptying that. And that’s where the craziness started. I thought I had all these boxes full of craft supplies. Bins and bins of them. But as I emptied out drawers what I saw was a lot of memory stuff (kids papers, kids art, movie stubs, fliers from places we’d ate at or went to) and not as many of the craft supplies that I’d been expecting (Oh I do have a lot, don’t get me wrong, it’s just a manageable amount). So after hours of sorting all my supplies miraculously fit into my grandmothers desk and the little cart next to it. (The memory stuff? Not so much. I need a whole other day to sort through that and figure out where I’m storing it).

What’s going to happen to the craft room/studio/study-oh (as Greg calls it)? We’ve decided to make it our Cave of Solitude. But that’s another blog post. 🙂