Tag: craft room

Graphic Design

Do what you love. Love what you do.

Jessica Smith

I am very excited for my weekend. Tomorrow morning I’m driving to Pennsylvania to see my sister, my momma and my godmother for a day of girly fun. We are going shopping, moseying around Amish country, touring vineyards and visiting Longwood Gardens. AND I get to see my sister’s new house! Very exciting. Then, Sunday is Father’s Day. The hubby and I are having dad and the family over for brunch — I’m making waffles. Mmmmm. THEN, I’m celebrating Father’s Day with my step dad and we’re having delicious steaks. Mmmmm. It’s going to be a food-filled day.

My weekend is totally jam-packed with fun, but no time for any of my ongoing projects. It’s no biggie, but I still wish we had three-day weekends all the time. I could get so much done!

Speaking of getting stuff done… I am working hard to get my craft room organized and pretty. I put a lot of supplies away last night and am sorting through decorations to figure out what I want to hang and where. I want to hang a print of mine in my craft room for sure and I thought this would be fitting:

UPDATE 5/2/15: This print is now for sale in my Etsy shop! It only took me three years to create one. Sheesh. Head over and check it out 🙂

ETSY-PHOTO_Do-what-you-love

Another project I want to do for my craft room is to spell out “CREATE” above my work space. I’m not sure how I want to tackle that yet… maybe 3D letter, maybe more prints… we’ll see!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and a fantastic Father’s Day!

Home Improvement

OMG OMG OMG Craft room!

Jessica Smith

Best blog post title ever, huh? It perfectly relays my excitement for my craft room. This weekend the hubster, my dad and I fixed up my craft room so it is epic-ly awesome.

I bought two cabinets for my  room when I went garage sale hopping last month. I paid a whole $5 for each cabinet. Brand new they would have cost $130 a piece! Sweet savings. The best part about them is that the woman who sold them to me used them in her craft room. She was so excited that I would be using the for the same purpose.

I also picked up a third cabinet from Lowe’s. Unfortunately, it was too tall so I had to return it. So the hubby and I visited a local hardware thrift store that sells home improvement items from people’s home renovations. They had lots of cabinets, window and doors that otherwise might have been thrown away. We were able to find a white cabinet that was the same height as my yard sale goodies for $35!

Before we picked up the third cabinet I planned on painting the other two white. I thought the white would pop against the teal walls. So I primed my yard sale cabinets, leaving “X” marks on the sides that I didn’t want people to see. Since my third cabinet was already white, I didn’t have to paint it!

Once the cabinets were primed, I painted then with two coats of semi-gloss white paint.

While I waited for the cabinets to dry, I hopped in my car and drove back to Lowe’s (this past week I was at either Home Depot or Lowe’s four different times!). I originally bought knobs for my cabinet drawers, but since the other cabinet had handles I swapped out the knobs for 11 matching handles.

I easily switched the cabinet hardware on the one with pre-existing handles. Then the hubster and I installed the handles on the two cabinets without any hardware. We were using my small electric drill until we got fed up with its lack of power. I asked my dad to borrow his bigger, better drill. He said, “Of course,” then surprised us with our very own corded, super powerful drill. He’s awesome.

With the new drill, Brian finished installing the hardware on the cabinets and all systems were go for putting the laminate on top. If you need a slab of pre-cut laminate, Lowe’s is the place to go. Home Depot no longer carries the pre-cut pieces, so you have to pay big bucks ($14 a square foot and higher) for their laminate. I was able to buy a 8 foot long piece of laminate at Lowe’s for $108 — and I had a 10% off coupon. Not too bad!

After we had the laminate on top of the cabinets we maneuvered things around so two cabinets were on one side, and the bigger cabinet was on the other. This left a perfect amount of space for a chair in the middle! It’s also the perfect place for Remmy to cuddle up and take a nap while I do crafts. We decided not to glue, screw, install, etc. the laminate quite yet, just in case I want to rearrange the cabinets. We’ll probably do that in a couple of weeks after I take the room for a test drive.

My dad had a great idea to buy a power strip and mount it to the side of one cabinet so I have a lot of outlets I can use. It was also great because it saved us from drilling out a hole for electrical cords in the laminate and it’s hidden from sight.

Aren’t they so cute working together!?! Love it. And how about those banana boxers! Get a belt, hubbs.

Check out my beautiful workspace! All in all, it only cost about $150.

I’m so impressed with how well the cabinets match. The white looks fantastic and the hardware is great.

We also installed shelves for even more storage. The hubby and I bought super long shelves for our office right after we moved into our house. We had them cut down so they’d fit perfectly in our nook, and we saved the remnants just in case we needed them later on. These pieces were a great length for my craft room, so I grabbed some shelving mounts this weekend and I had me some fancy new shelves. (Don’t mind all of the crap below the shelves… I’m working on it haha).

With all of my new storage, I’ll finally be able to clean up my craft room so it is a working space! *HUGE sigh of relief*

What do you think? Want to come craft with me in my sweet new space!?!?!

Home Improvement

Spring, is that you?

Jessica Smith

As it continues to get warmer and stay warmer, I get more and more excited for spring. We started seriously house hunting in October/November, so it was the dead of fall. We looked at more than 30 houses, all without leaves on the trees or flowers in the gardens. I just know our house and our neighborhood are going to look completely different once there are leaves on the trees in our front and back yard. The flowers are beginning to pop up and our trees are getting mini leaves, and I just can’t wait. Plus, with spring almost here it means I can plant a garden soon! Mmmm… fresh vegetables!

Here are a few photos of our pretty flowers:

Daffodils
Pink Hyacinth
Purple Hyacinth (before they bloom)

As you can see, we have a lot of hyacinth! They are beautiful and I love them. I get super excited each time a new one pops up. It’s totally nerdy, but whatevs.

Any recommendations on pretty flowers to plant? I kind of want a hydrangea bush and maybe a fruit tree. That would be awesome.

*****

On the home improvement front, we did a few things here and there. The hubby cleaned the house today. He is awesome. Glen sanded the family room, so it’s pretty much ready to be painted. He leaves for a vacation on Saturday, so we have 10 days to paint the entire room before he gets back to install the floors, granite hearth (which we pick up tomorrow!), TV cabinet, molding…. and anything else we think of. Luckily, I have Monday through Wednesday of next week off work — gotta love working at a university and getting a few days off for spring break — so I’ll be painting a lot then.

We also went to Home Depot tonight to buy a new shower head for our master bathroom and frosted window film for our guest bathroom window.

We unfortunately don’t have the best water pressure in the house, so the previous shower head didn’t quite cut it. It had a mediocre stream of water. This one has a much better distribution of H2O. And, it’s prettied.

We looked for new shower knobs, but Home Depot didn’t sell any individual knobs that we could find. Right now we have the icky plastic ones. If we are stuck with those, I want to revamp them like one of my favorite bloggers (Becky @ Infarrantly Creative) did to her faucet knobs:

I’d label mine “hot” and “cold,” instead of using the knobs as a reminder to be clean (if we’re int he shower, obviously were remembering to be clean!). It’s such a great idea! Much classier than the typical plastic knob.

What else, what else… I ordered shower curtains today for our various showers. Here’s a helpful tip: If you install a curved shower rod, you very well might need a longer curtain — and those are a little limited in selection and you seem to have to buy them online only. I bought a white, waffle-weave curtain for our guest bath (extra long) and an ivory, waffle-weave curtain for our master bath (stall size). The neutral curtains will be great. Now I can paint the bathrooms whatever colors I want!

*****

This weekend I head down to Virginia Beach to see my cousin. she and I are going to experiment with taking photos of jewelry! I’m very excited for my visit. Hopefully I’ll have some fun photos to show when I get back.

I’ll try to do a blog post while I’m there, but who knows! Pictures of some of our moderately assembled rooms to come tomorrow. AND, as soon as I get my craft room assembled (it’s unfortunately rather low on house priorities right now), I’ve got some great craft ideas I will share!