Runaway October

Or the S.M.O.R as I like to call it — The Sewing Machines Oper­a­tions Room.

Remem­ber this sorry lit­tle 11’x11’ room?

Which was later cleaned and some­what orga­nized to look like this:

Well, it’s kind of fin­ished now. It’s now a very work­able space and I can actu­ally com­plete projects some­where other than the kitchen table. YAY!

I took at least 100 pic­tures today, and about 20 a few weeks ago. This room is very very hard to photograph.

I even tried to take a video with my fancy new Flip Video Cam­corder from my Prilosec spon­sor­ship, but it eats bat­ter­ies like no other.

Of course I couldn’t find any bat­ter­ies to replace them with.

Such is the life of a mom.

The project table is com­pletely hand­made by me and my dad. We used plans from Knock Off Wood. Here’s the top and the cubby sides.

I’ll go into it in a lit­tle more detail later.

I’ll have to slowly buy or make some pretty bas­kets on con­tain­ers to go in here.

Love these stools from Overstock.com

Hand­made string balls made by one of the boys.

There was two.

One of them bit the dust, or rather, the dogs water bowl.

The string ball, not the boys.

Well, okay, they usu­ally assault the water bowl at least once a day, but they don’t melt.

Unless you count the dirt that melts off.

I should make some more. String Balls, not boys. Maybe a lit­tle girl but that’s a dif­fer­ent sub­ject.

Now maybe I can get these bad boys quilted and bound and in use.

And what craft room photo shoot is com­plete with­out a pic­ture of a cat.

I used Martha Stew­art Hydrangea flat paint for the walls. I also painted the ceil­ing and all the trim, but can’t find the names of them. They’re the same ones that were rec­om­mended on the paint chip palette. No wor­ries about every­thing match­ing together. What a smart girl, eh?

I can’t seem to find a decent sam­ple color online, so you’ll just have to squint and imag­ine you can tell the true color of everything.

I do hope to make some roman blinds or cur­tains for the win­dows. And the bas­kets I men­tioned ear­lier. I def­i­nitely need some art­work and other pret­ties to hang up and keep me happy while I work. I would really really love a stereo or MP3 player of some sort in there too. I work so much bet­ter with music.

So, that’s the S.M.O.R.

What do you think?

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I have a con­fes­sion. I can be quite a slob.

The evi­dence: Exhibit A — My craft room, The SMOR (sewing machine oper­a­tions room), about 24 hours ago.

When we bought this house, we knew one of the rooms would be used for hob­bies. Unfor­tu­nately, we had been using the din­ing room table pre­vi­ously so we had no fur­ni­ture to set up in there. About the time we moved, I was given a very nice cut­ting table and sewing machine desk. They came from a fam­ily friend who had passed away. Sadly, she was a heavy smoker and smoked in her hobby room. The tables just ooze nicotine.

My father in law con­vinced me that I shouldn’t try to paint them, as they’re cov­ered in melamine. While I’m fairly cer­tain I would be able to repaint them, new fur­ni­ture would be eas­i­est. Of course I decided this after try­ing to clean one of the tables with bleach (Bleck!) and ruin­ing a per­fectly good skirt.

So I struck a deal with my hus­band. If I clean the craft room, could we build new fur­ni­ture for the room? He agreed, poor sap.

So this is where it stands cur­rently. Not “clean” per se, but every­thing has been gone through and sorted and I found all kinds of stuff I had for­got­ten about! Score. My M.O. was to grab what I needed, take it down stairs to craft, bag/box up what­ever was left and toss it in the SMOR when I was done. Bad bad. I had at least 15 empty boxes when I was done, and dou­ble that amount of bags to recycle

(I still need to vac­uum, obviously.)

This is the table I want we’ll be mak­ing, free plans cour­tesy of Knock Off Wood. It’ll go well with the IKEA Expe­dit book­case that’s in there currently.

I know that if I had a vehi­cle right now, me and the boys would be ter­ror­iz­ing Home Depot and Lowe’s. I’ll keep you posted on our progress. I’m super excited to make my own craft fur­ni­ture, and for so much less than Pot­tery Barn too!