first up. wishing my girl a very, very happy 13th birthday! today is alyssa's birthday! i should be blogging about her right now. but her and her friends are in the middle of her slumber party right now. no idea why they call it a "slumber party", since there is no slumbering going on yet here. lol! so i figured i might as well do all this photo editing and typing for this post, while i listen to them be all silly and crazy. more on the birthday girl later 🙂
finally took some photos of my new scrap space. it's all been moved for a week now. but i'm still playing with it a little bit. finding what works for me and how i scrap. moving some things here and there. but i'll share it as it is right now.
this is the view walking into the room. it's a fairly small downstairs bedroom. it was originally my scrap room, for the first 5 years that we lived here (you can see a peek at it HERE). then i moved upstairs for 3 years. now, i'm back downstairs. my reasons are simple. i'm just not as productive as i could be when i don't have my stuff near me. my scrapping has changed so much in the last few years. 3 years ago, it was whatever i wanted to scrap or work on. and nowdays, i'm working on assignments and deadlines. sort of like having a part-time job. which i'm loving more than anything. but i also have a full time job. i work at home. but i work downstairs. i'm downstairs at least 10 hours a day with the daycare kids. i would drag things down each morning that i thought i would work on in my free moments or during naptime. then i would run upstairs at least 10 times a day, getting things that i forgot. then i would accomplish nothing, because it's hard to do that much, if the majority of your stuff is upstairs. so i would drag it all back up each night. then the girls would be sleeping, and i still wouldn't get anything done because i didn't want to wake them up. it was just making things more work and wasting a ton of energy dragging things all around the house. it was exhausting.
so i decided to move. now my stuff is all downstairs and near me. i can run in the bedroom at any given moment. no running up and down the stairs, trying not to wake a napping kid or a sleeping joe (who works nights). the only thing i would have to go upstairs for is my printers, or my finished albums. after just one week of having my stuff moved, i can already tell you how much more i'm accomlishing and how much more less stressed i am while doing everything. i love it!
so, on with the change. this is walking into the bedroom. i have 2 of the ikea expedit shelves, just like i did upstairs. i already had one of them in here, with finished albums, cd's, dvd's, and all the girls electronic game stuff. so i basically was able to swap everything from one shelf to the other. then we decided that rather than trying to take apart the other shelf to bring downstairs, that it would be easier to just buy another expedit shelf (they're huge and can be buggers to put together). i had a small scrap sale a few weekends ago, and made enough cash to buy a new shelf. so now we still have the 2 shelves upstairs, and then 2 in here. other than those shelves, i basically have room for a desk. not the huge island that i had before. but a decent sized desk. and i really wanted it away from the wall, so that i could have my back to the window and face the door. i have this weird thing about having my back to the door, always worrying about someone sneaking up on me. i think i watch too many lifetime movies. lol! i'm trying it out, but i may move the desk under the window if i don't like it enough.
this shelf was the shelf that was already there. it's to the right of the desk, if you were sitting at the desk. with your back to the window. lol! i moved all my pattern paper and cardstock down first, so this is where it ended up. the idea books came next, so those ended up on the top row. i have 2 rows of baskets on the bottom shelves. holding more paper, paper scraps, and a few bins of alterable items and odds and ends. i had the 2 black magnetic boards from before, and added the silver magnetic board that i've had tucked away for years.
i stole a chair from the kitchen. too bad it's not black. and too bad it doesn't have a cushion. i've been standing scrapping for 3 years. so i'm really not a big sitter. but at the same time, it's SO nice to be able to sit if i want too. i've missed having that option from time to time.
the other shelf is directly in front of the desk. so if i was sitting at the desk, i would be looking there. in the corner, i have a pack-n-play tucked away. guess i could stick that in the garage for now.
this shelf holds most of my embellishments and stuff. the top row is some jars. i used to have that entire shelf of jars, but that shelf wasn't going to fit anywhere in this room. so i really cleaned them out, and condensed stuff down. i have some larger jars on the other expedit shelf. and somehow my large ribbon jars ended up in the playroom. but they look good out there, so i might keep them there. this top row holds the rest of the jars i have. i stuck a storage box in the back of each shelf, with photos and things i don't use much. that way, i could place a few jars higher up where i could see them. works for now. then i have rows of baskets. holding embellishments, chipboard, alphabet stickers, etc.
if i was sitting at the desk and looking to the left, i would be looking out the door. the door that i want to be facing, so that no one ever sneaks up on me. i will see them coming. lol! if you look out the door, you can see a little bit of the scrap island. and my wall of photos.
the other wall has a closet. i havn't had a closet in 3 years. so i'm actually loving that i can tuck stuff away in there that i don't necessarily use all the time.
i havn't actually cleaned out most of the closet. but i did have 4 of these stacked drawer towers in there, 2 on each side of the doors. i went through and cleaned some stuff out, and condensed it down to just 2 stacked towers. so i had 2 whole ones to fill up with stuff. i have paints (which could go back on my paint shelf, if i decide to hang it back up), extra adhesives, die cut tools (all my slice stuff and cuttlebug stuff, along with my quickutz stuff that i never use), punches, stamps, inks, embossing stuff, etc. i can just turn to the left of the desk, open up the closet, and all this stuff is right there. but it's stuff that doesn't get used enough to require it to be out all the time.
what scraproom would be complete, without a few pairs of stinky soccer cleats?!?! like i said, i havn't actually cleaned out the rest of the closet yet. so these are sitting right next to my cuttlebug. my poor cuttlebug doesn't deserve such torture. and oddly enough, i'm about 97% sure these cleats don't even fit the girls anymore. so i'm not sure why they're important enough to be taking up closet space.
and when you walk out, here's the scrap island. which now resides in the playroom. which is really the dining room area in any other normal house. i wasn't sure what i would do with the island. and then my friend, deneen, said i should put it in the playroom. and i said "you're crazy". but then i thought about it, and it wasn't a bad idea. there used to be a couch here, and a super old coffee table. this island doesn't even come out as far as those 2 items did. although it is taller, so it does actually take up more space in some way. but there is still a ton of room for the kids to play. i'm not putting my scrap stuff on it, mind you. the little ones would get into that stuff. i figured i could put the toy baskets along the one side. the ends are empty right now. and the backside is perfect for storing the girls school backpacks, soccer bags, and instruments. although i do see a backpack sticking out in this picture, usually they're tucked in.
then we took out the 3 oak shelves we had against that wall with the enlarged photos of the girls. they held all the toys and toy baskets. and in it's place, we brought down the red cabinet that was upstairs. it's actually a really good sized cabinet. on top, you can see my huge ribbon jars. they were too big to put anywhere in my room, so i stuck them up here. and i think they look cute. sort of decorative. and inside, we have all the toys. not the ones that all fit nicely in baskets. but the toys. like the larger cars, the little people stuff, the toy computers, the baby dolls, the little tikes toys, the little dollhouses, stuff like that. then i can just open up the doors, and the kids can grab what they want. sure, the doors stick out while open. but it's not a big deal. what we're really liking about this, is that we're not constantly looking at toys. it was different when the girls were little and played with these same toys. but they don't anymore. so it's super nice to have things a bit more hidden when the daycare kids aren't here. and so far, the little ones are digging the change. it's good for them. i'm sure they're tired of the same old setup after all these years too.
i figured that this would make for some great, new storage. but i also figured it would be a great spot for the girls to spread out and work on homework or projects. and when my desk in the scrap room isn't big enough, i can easily come out here to the island. and i'm finding that i'm doing a lot of my work out here. the kids can't reach up there to begin with. so if i spread out some stuff, there's no rush to pick it up. and at naptime, this is a perfect spot to work. i don't have to cram myself into the kitchen, and move the stuff that is already there. i can just spread out here. it's close enough, that i can see nikolas sleeping in the family room from where i stand. and i can hear haley upstairs where she naps. and it's right next to the scrap room. so it's just a few steps away for getting things here and there. i'm finding that i do most of my paper and photos parts of layouts out here. but then i go in the bedroom to embellish and stuff. it's working out so well.
so, there you have it. this is what we spent 2 weeks working on. and it's finally all coming together. we have a big, empty space up in the loft. we have stuff up there, but it does seem bare without the big island. seemed really weird at first. but now the empty space, and the roominess of it is really growing on us. we figure we'll take our time figuring out what we're doing up there.
Laura Vegas 
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