Happy Place Organizing!

Hello friends and Happy Monday! I never got the chance to post over the weekend so I thought I would share a few craft room updates with you tonight. Over the weekend, the hubby and I had a date day and saw the Peanuts Movie. It was super cute! We had a nice lunch and did a little shopping too! I have begun making purchases for my upcoming trip to Prague. Now...as you know, I am a Florida girl and do not own a lot of winter clothes. It does get cold here but it tends to warm up during the day so we have to layer and most of my layers are fairly thin. I will be needing some warmer clothing to take to Prague since December and January are the cold months there and it even snows! Fingers crossed that it will snow while I am there! Anywho, I found a cute pair of short black boots at TJ Maxx. I also ordered a pair of riding boots from DSW and they arrived Friday. So excited to be a boot owner finally! I will share my Prague purchases in a few weeks after I have finished hunting and gathering..lol!

So, after we got home from our day out, I put groceries away and immediately started working on partnering everyone for the Christmas Ornament Exchange. So excited about that! It took me about 3 hours on the computer copying and pasting, assigning and reassigning partners, and so on to get it all sorted out and then I had to e-mail everyone. So, no time to blog Saturday. Thanks again to everyone who is participating! Sunday was a lazy day and I spent some time playing in my happy place tweaking and rearranging. Let me share.....

Over the past couple weeks I have cleaned out the closet and  rearranged a few smaller pieces of furniture in my room, which leads to reorganizing. I am always reorganizing things when I think of a more functional way to store things. This is what lead to cleaning out the closet....

You may be wondering how that led to me cleaning out the closet. Let me explain. At school, if we want to get rid of things in our classrooms, we just sit things out in the hall for other hoarders teachers to grab. One of the Pre-K teachers had this in the hall. It was still in the original packaging. I decided to bring it home and use it in my craft room. So, I put it together with the original thought that I would use it for stickers and scrapbook supplies, but after assembling it, I knew it would work perfectly for a gift wrap station. Well, most of my gift wrapping supplies have been housed in the closet, so I began digging it all out so I could sort through it all and get rid of some things and store the rest in this piece.  It works perfectly!

I assembled it inside out so the craft brown side would show. I love this look! It should have looked like this, but I did not want that bright color in my craft room. It would not have matched anything. It sits on top of these two little shelves next to my sewing station.

I put a tag on the front and wrote this on it....because that's what I believe. :)

The baskets below hold ribbons, bows, and basket filler/grass.

The little metal container holds some tags. 

The shelf on the right holds cards and stationery items. I have been trying to send snail mail out more often....especially to Miranda. She enjoys getting mail from home. 

Here's the most recent mail I sent her. She received it today and sent me pictures. I had fun water coloring the envelope! We used to call her Randa Pooh when she was little so Pooh Bear adorns the card as well. I used paint, stickers, washi tape, and drew all the little black and red hearts myself.

I need to get started on another one to send soon!

Moving on, I placed the tray I thrifted a few weeks ago on my big desk for now. It holds a few of my apothecary jars full of goodies, along with my twine holder and my glitters.

Back in July when I took Miranda to the airport in Tampa to leave for Prague, I went to the Container Store. I purchased this piece and am so glad I did. I left it empty until I came up with the best use for it. A few weeks ago, I decided what that use was. I am using it to hold all my die cuts, ephemera, enamel dots, flair, cork pieces, and so on for scrap booking. It works great!

I sorted my die cuts and ephemera by color and each color has a box. Here are my pinks and blues.

This one holds all my cork pieces.

This one holds flair and a variety of other decorative pieces.

Moving on to my desk....this is how I just left it. I was in there piddling a little while ago and have been trying to leave it clean when I finish.

I recently decided to use my Recollections carousel to corral all my tools. It is working out very nicely. I like having all of these often used items in one spot.

I use my vintage mail sorters to hold stickers. Here is the one that sits on my desk.

This little milk glass dish sits on top of my file cabinet to the right of my desk. The other mail sorter sits just behind it.

Do you remember the metal tissue box cover I received in my Thrift It, Gift It, Facelift It challenge back in August? Well, I finally put a box inside and I gold leafed the feet and wreath on the front. I love it now! The box inside is painted gold. Very elegant little trash can tidy tub isn't it? :)

And, that my friends brings me to the end for now. It is almost my bedtime! I am excited that we have Wednesday off from school for Veteran's Day! My sister and two best friends will be coming over that evening for our weekly planner night and I am excited to see them. I hope you have a wonderful week my friends. 

Until next time.....