Once upon a disaster......

WARNING: LONG BLOG. READING IS ADVISED

A few things you should know about me:
                      *I am organized to the extreme. I know where everything is all the time.
                      *I color coordinate and alphabetize my clothing by which country it was made in.
                      *I am a size 0 but dress in a lot of layers so most people don't know that.
                      *I am despise coffee, chocolate and love rated R horror flick movies.

Okay.......None of those are true. I'm a mess. My mind is a mess. I forget things. I never know where things are. I do color coordinate but not my closet, and I don't care what country my clothes are made in as long as children are not making them. I am not a single digit size, I do dress in layers though because I like to. I live on decaf coffee, I have a small basket of chocolate Hershey kisses in my craft room and I refuse to watch R rated horror flicks.

I'm not a hoarder. I'm not dirty. I'm just........cluttered. So, one of my resolutions this year was to break out of the cluttered shell and enter the throne of organization that many of my family sit upon. Also, being cluttered does not help my anxiety and I do everything I can to help control that....so BRING ON THE CLEANING!

I'm ashamed to show you before pictures......but it must happened......for the sake of lesson learned....

You may be thinking......that's not so bad! You know how they say photo's add on 10lbs? Yea, well they also make things look not as bad as they really are. Sorry I can't rotate that last picture. Just go old school with me and tilt your head to the right.

When I enter rooms like this I think......where do I even begin?! So I did what I knew I had to.....I got a coffee. Because fabric is the thing I have the most of, I started there. Okay.....I really didn't.....I went to Target and spent $50 in storage....than fabric.

I understand a lot is going on in this picture. First I bought shelves....organized my fabric by color....put them in the shelves. Genius level work. Than I decided that I don't like my paint in a box. I can't see it and I love color so I wanted it displayed! I took two old skinny pencil boxes and flipped them upside down to give the tower look as I was not going to pay for that. The green basket I had in my house in another room, I re utilized the orange box and bought the teal and pink one for a whopping $1. The magnetic strip on the wall is from ikea. I use it for my scissors.....which apparently I need to seek help for my collection.

I do not have a medical condition like my sister-in-law K.H. who has A LOT of ribbon, but I do have some. I needed it stored where I could see it and where it would stop unraveling and driving me bonkers. So, for $2.99 I bought a spice rack and ikea, painted it and glued a flower on it. Mostly because I love bright colors and am I girl that likes flowers too. I'm happy with it.

This is a vase I bought at Michael's 80% off because apparently it was a Christmas vase. If white and rhinestones is Christmas may house is Christmas all year! The whatever you want to call it sparkly things were also 80% off of 1.00.....do that math. So, This project.....AWESOME. Oh, and for a place mat I had an unused dish cloth so I cut it in half.

I had a standard ugly cork board that I got for free at a garage sale a few years back. I painted the trim, covered it with fabric and hung it with an orange ribbon. I put a tack in the wall to hold it and glued a flower to the tack. Voila.

I needed somewhere to put my paint brushes, so I went to the Dollar Tree and bought this vase. Guess how much it was?! Than.....I wrapped a ribbon around it, glued on a flower and some rhinestones and called it good. So much cuter than a lot of other things.

I needed a thread holder but I'm cheap and the "real" ones are $29.99. Yea, no thanks. So, I found a piece of salvage wood, painted it and hammered nails into it. There you have it. It may be ghetto....it may be cheap....but it does the job and it is cute in all it's tealness.

Alright this was the biggest challenge -  I have a beautiful chocolate/black lab, however, living in a smaller two bedroom apartment can become a challenge as his kennel is GINORMOUS! That is not an exaggeration. It is 48" by 32". I have been fighting with my over the door iron for 6 years now and thought....I'm doing something about this! So, I decided since his kennel is so big and he is not in it very often I would turn it into a giant craft space/reversible ironing board. This was probably the smartest thing I have done all year. Not even kidding. It is SO perfect for my quilting. Here is the huge ugly kennel....

I bought a piece of cheap wood $6 and had the fine gentlemen at Home Depot cut it to size, than I painted on side. I wanted on side painted so if I was not sewing and working on other crafts I could use it and have a hard service. I may have gotten carried about with bright colors and glitter......but....I'm female and it was 1:00am and I freehanded it.

Most of the time this will not show, but when it does, it will make the room a bit brighter. After that, I flipped the board over and smoothly glued down a large piece of felt to cover the whole thing. Next I took a piece of canvas material I LOVED and paid $5 for and pulled it tight staple gunning it to the back after I folded a nice hem. Next, I added a pink ribbon and flower. Because......why not?! So here it is.....my craft table/ironing board/dog kennel!

Alright, you have made it this far....I'm impressed. I made several other things. I am not going to explain. Organized, cleaned the closet....here are pictures.

Thank you. Now my posts will be shorter as I share ONE craft project with you at a time!

Go Craft,

Erin