pics of craft room

So i was cruising message boards today and saw a couple of posts about craft rooms. This inspired me to share the mess that is my work area.

Months ago i started moving things to an extra bedroom upstairs that would be my new craft room. I was using our formal dining room as my craft room because it had a good amount of light and faced the front of the house. So when the kiddos were outside i could keep an eye on them. Well we had one room that was sitting empty except for a bed and a dresser.

I moved them out, primed and painted the walls and then started to move my things in. First off i hate the color i painted the room. I started to use a can of paint that we had originally purchased for our bedroom. I thought it was softer than it actually came out. When i had painted one wall i decided i didn't like it, but chris came into the room and declared that he loved the color. so i finished the room with the green paint.

there is only one window in this room so the paint makes it feel much smaller and darker. :( but i figured maybe it would grow on me once i worked in there for a while......um nope not yet.

i also have a huge problem with putting things back once i have used them and tend to have a very messy work area.

I just can't seem to wrap my head around working in a neat & tidy workspace. I need a little chaos to create.......maybe that is why i have 4 kids!!

so here is the desk i sit at a lot to make jewelry, polymer clay, resin, etc.

to the right of that desk is the door to the bedroom and the closet. on the back of the door i used to have my rubber stamps in that nifty little shelf thing but lucien kept taking them down to chew on and ruined some of the stamps. grrr

to the right again and there is a shelf with random things piled all over. a lot os stuff started out at the bottom and has been stacked on top to keep lucien out of it.......again.

on the desktop there is a big cutting thing, like teachers use, my scale for weighing packages and soap ingredients. my serger, which i rarely use. lol and the "game" tv. i need to get that out of my room i just have to figure out where i can stick it.

over a little more to the right and the rest of the desk top. that nifty desk was a freecycle goodie. i was so excited when i got it. it is kitchen counter top with ikea legs attached to the bottom. on top of it are my toaster oven, not for cooking. ;) embroidery floss, alcohol, copper metal sheets for embossing, trash bags for my trash can, tiles, gesso, diamond glaze etc.

underneath it are beads, clay, fabric, glue, tapes, spray paint.

to the right is a small box of drawers that hold paper, ephemera, coloring books. next to that stacked up against the wall is an old cork board that i want to recover, one of my cats thought it was a special scratching post. there is also some foam core board and random bits of wood shelves.

to the right of that is where i have put my entertainment stuff. my stereo, cds, tv, dvd player, and vhs player. underneath it is a basket of tissue papers and wrapping stuff. some old jeans and the stereos subwoofer.

a little more to the right and you can see the one and only window in the room. with a curtain that doesn't fit the window. it was from marina's room she saw the curtain i had hung in there and loved it so i swapped with her and realized oops it doesn't fit. i have plans to make one that fits but who knows when that will happen.

Now i will share pics of my old room. it still has a lot of stuff in it that don't fit into the new room. i have shelves that need to be hung that i plan to use for fabric storage. then i will have room under the big desk to store my bins of other stuff. until then i have it all broken up between two rooms.

These shelves need to be moved upstairs but i just don't have room for them. I'm gonna measure the tv and stuff and if it will fit on these shelves i'm gonna put them in that part of my room. cause i need the storage space.

we took the toys out of the living room and have been storing them in this corner of the room. chris cleaned them up this weekend cause they kept spilling out into the hallway by the front door.

i love this huge desk but dread trying to carry it up the stairs. i'm thinking i might move it into the dining room so that the kids can use it for homework etc.

also another couple of shelves packed with stuff. i'm going to put the black bookshelf in the gameroom eventually and use it for all the kids books. i will just have to figure out where to put my stuff.

this is the other big gray shelf that i want to put in my room upstairs. the bookshelf will probably also end up in the game room.

i'm also planning on emptying those stacked white baskets and finding a place for them in my upstairs room probably next to my main desk to put my most used items in, maybe that way i will clean off my desk more often. :)

this is the doorway into the kitchen and there is my big honking cutting table. kinda hard to use it when i keep putting piles of crap on it. and there are my lovely crutches from when i broke my toe. you can also sort of see the opening that leads to the hallway by the front door.

you can also see the lovely diaper boxes that have also taken up residence in this room. we have one big white box on wheels that we use to keep all the diaper stuff in one place. wipes, diapers, butt cream etc.

this is the light fixture decorated with my lovely bride and groom. visitors find this sort of deco odd but people who truly know me thinks it fits right in. :)

in a lot of the pictures from the second room you can see a lot of the artwork decorating the walls. most of it is stuff that the kids have made me over the years. i love displaying the stuff they make they are such talented little guys. :)

chris and i talked this weekend about putting a couple of my work tables in our bedroom in front of the two big windows we have in there. they get a ton of light all day and our room is huge. so we are looking into buying a bed rail for one of the twin beds so we can move lucien and portia into a room to share. they will get the bunk beds and jewel will have her own room with a twin bed that has a book shelf head board. she will be so happy.

so we can move the crib out of our room and move out chris' 3 bookshelves. then we would have our bed, 2 nightstands, and our dresser. i'm excited about having a room with so much light but chris has made me agree to try and keep my area a little neater than i have in the past. he has a hard time with all the clutter and stacking that i am guilty of constantly doing.

i'm a slob and he is a neat freak. lol i even asked him if i could sew in our bathroom. it is huge too and gets lots of good light from a big window. the bathroom is so big that when you take a shower you could run totally hot water and there is never condensation on the mirror. it even has 2 vents in there, that's how big it is. a big huge waste of space. if it were up to me we would have a tiny little bathroom and use more of that space to expand the laundry room or our bedroom.

eventually i hope to convince chris to put up a wall in the game room to make it into another bedroom/guestroom. that is another huge waste of space.......but ya know that's just my opinion. :)

Pictures of me...

I was so excited last night.....knew i shouldn't get so excited.......rarely do things work out the way we want them. Life happens and once just once i would like to go to a playdate with my moms group during the day!!

So right now i don't have a car cause the clutch went out in chris' barbie mobile and because of all the craziness of the last year we don't have the money to replace it just yet. So until we get out income tax refund chris is using the truck to go to work. Which normally i don't care about because i usually don't drive anymore...........ya know miss daisy and all.

but somedays there are things i want to do but i am a lazy ass and don't want to get up early and wake up lucien early, pile all the kids into the car to take him to the park & ride. then i would have to rush home hurry the kids to get ready for school and deal with sore ass lucien. so most of the time it is not worth all the extra work. it would be different if he caught a bus earlier but he catches one that is just around the time the kids are getting ready for school and leaving so this is the reason we would all be rushed.

and for those of you who don't know (most of the fam knows) chris, lucien and portia are the meanest people first thing in the morning. chris is the most laid back calm person i know but until he gets coffee and that first smoke...........watch out. lol

anyway back to the original story. last night lucien passed out at 8:15 which was cool cause i wanted to head to bed early. our mommy/kid playgroup was gonna have a 2 year olds playdate this morning. perfect for lulu and it was in the next subdivision over so i could actually walk over there. YAY i was so psyched. So this morning when the kids left for school i tried to lay back down, but i was excited...........sad no?.............interaction with other adults........someone other than my husband. So i decided to get up and do my hair and makeup..........yes i think it is gonna snow here tonight......lol

well i was done and ready by 10am which is when the group was planning to meet. So i figured no big deal if we are a little late they won't mind. well guess what it is now 11am and lucien is still not awake!! just a few days ago he went to bed at 8:30pm and was up the next morning at 5am. of course when you are expecting something it doesn't happen. bah

the group was only gonna hang until 12pm so looks like we will be missing yet another playdate. so far i have only been to the mno's. if i didn't personally know a few of the members they might wonder if i actually have children.

so since i had myself all done up i decided to try and take a few pics. i think i'm gonna have to use one of these for a valentines day gift for chrissy......he will be so happy to have a new picture to put up in his office. the one he has now is a pic that was taken when we first met. we had only been on a few dates! but that is the last known picture of my very flat tummy so i love it. i will have him bring it home and i will put it in my craft room and build a shrine around it.

the shrine of roni's old belly??

he will be happy cause he thinks i'm way too thin in that picture. i barely weighed around 90 lbs when we met. I now weigh 130 lb. All my life i never weighed that much, except during pregnancy, but after i had portia the weight just stuck around. For a little while i dropped down to 115lbs and i wasn't trying just happened. then i got pregnant with lu and here we are. :)

and while i'm thinking about it here are pics of the super mario brothers coasters that i made for my brother hopefully they will have them this week.

and here is a necklace that i made for my brother-in-laws girlfriend Kayti........aren't they just the prettiest couple? they are the beautiful people.........they don't have kids and get plenty of sleep. lol i like to call her madison cause she looks like daryl hannah and i love the movie splash. :) yeah my soldering skills need some work

So i'm wondering is it normal for a 2 year old not to talk? Lucien is going to be 2 on Jan. 30 and he still does not talk. He does say a few things daddy, mama, bye, & hi. He babbles a lot maybe he thinks he is communicating but it certainly isn't english. lol I was watching the joy luck club the other day (love that movie) and when they spoke chinese he paid very close attention. Maybe he thinks they were speaking like him?

today i emailed the head of the local ECI to see about having him evaluated. Maybe they can give me some help and tell me how i can help him to start actually talking. Chris thinks i worry too much about it and that he will start talking when he is good and ready. maybe there are just so many people in this house always talking he doesn't think he needs to speak too. *shrug* Could be that his chatty sisters do enough talking and he doesn't feel he needs to add anything. :)

I also called my doctor today to speak to a nurse. They prescribed Lunesta last week to help me sleep and it works great......but, you know there is always a but.......it leaves the most horrible taste in my mouth. it is like having an aspirin sitting in my mouth all the time dissolving slowly. everything tastes horrible and bitter. the nurse recommended taking it with orange juice and that should help the taste not be so bitter. she also said that most people report that it goes away in a couple of weeks.

she did tell me that if i still wanted to change the prescription that they would be happy to do that but that i would have to return the unused portion to the pharmacy. the pharmacy would have to account for the correct amount being returned and they would destroy the remainder. and i would not receive a refund, it cost me $45 to fill!! she said if i wait until the script runs out then they could change it for me and i wouldn't be out the $45. So i'm gonna try and suck it up for another week and drink it with the oj to see if it helps.

after payday if it is still leaving the taste i'm gonna call back and have them change it and just let them take back what i haven't used. at first it was only happening at night after i took it and i figured i could just deal with it. but then it started lasting all day long. everything i eat & drink tastes horrible. i'm crossing my fingers that the nasty taste will pass cause i like the way it works.

with ambien i would take the pill and when it kicked in it was like getting hit over the head with a bat. all of a sudden bam i was in la la land. with the lunesta i just feel sleepy enough to fall asleep without a problem. my only complaint is the taste. last night i felt like i was gonna throw up from the taste. and don't even make the mistake of drinking a soda or anything carbonated after you take it cause then you burp the horrible bitter taste.......ewwww.

i think lucien is going to be an insomniac like his poor mother. the last few weeks he has just fought sleep so hard. he won't nap all day long and then at night he doesn't want to go to sleep at a decent hour. one night he was up until 3:30 i thought i was gonna fall over from being so exhausted but don't ya know as soon as he fell asleep i tried to lay down and was not able to fall asleep! so i had to get up and take my lunesta, then i worked until i was sleepy and passed out.

i guess the only good thing about all that is i get to work with him by my side while it is quiet and no one is asking for a million things. he watches tv and plays with his toys while i sit at my desk. I just shut the door to my work room and we hang out together. Usually i just set up his little mini couch and we sleep in there together. that way chris doesn't wake us up when he is getting ready for work. and chris gets to hog the bed and not worry about lucien hogging our bed. lol

On sunday i dyed my hair again. I used special effects wildflower which is a dark purple blue. I hope it doesn't fade fast. The atomic pink lasted a very long time but all the other colors i used before that faded really fast. chris is so silly he said "so now our bathmat will be stained purple instead of pink?" it started off white but everytime i shower my hair color stains it just a little bit more. :)

i also spent this weekend making polymer clay sushi beads. they came out super cute and now i just have to finish sanding and glazing them. not sure if i will use them to make necklaces, earrings, braclets or just sell them as beads to be used. i do have to use some of them to make a jewelry set for portia. she saw them and immediately fell in love. she loves sushi and said she wants to eat them up. lol

chris spent the weekend shampooing the carpets!! i told him i would do it and he said "no i would like to do it for you and i need to learn how to use the machine" wow..........maybe he plans to bump me off soon so he is making sure he knows how everything in the house works. lol he did the living room, the stairs and our bedroom. so nice to have clean carpet oh and he also cleaned the seat on the recliner.

and before i forget one more mother of the year moment. on saturday i went to the bathroom in our bedroom when i left i forgot to shut the door. so not too long after chris found lucien in there. He was dumping our bathroom trash can into the toilet. ugh. and he was having a blast! chris called me in there and said "look what your son did" ha ha funny how he is my son when he is being naughty. :)

it is very strange how he will stay out of the bathrooms if we shut the door. but will march right in if they are open. He knows how to open the doors and even opens the door to my work room when i have the latch hooked to keep him out. he figured out how to wiggle the door back and forth to get the latch to unhook and then just toots right on in. but he will usually stay out of the other rooms if the door is shut............weird.

And mother of the year award goes to.......

ME.........um nope. I tried yesterday i really did. So i went grocery shopping, just me and lucien. It was pure hell. :) I was exhausted and it was only 8am. First of all i have not been awake that early in forever. Lucien usually will not go to sleep until 11-midnight (sometimes later) and that is when i can go to bed. Not sleep just go lay in bed and wish i could sleep. I'm up until about 3am then i finally pass out and usually get up with lu around 9:30 - 10am.

Yes i have other kids that get themselves off to school. Marina leaves around 6:45 and the little guys leave around 7:45. They usually come tell me they are leaving and i lock the door behind them and set the alarm. They all wake themselves up with alarms, make their own breakfast and lunch (if they don't want school that day) i try to make lunches the night before but sometimes i forget. see not mother of the year.........chris says we are teaching them to be independent and self-sufficient..........sometimes it feels like i'm just a huge slacker and a failure as a mom. For many years i had friends refer to me as martha stewart cause i use to do so much...........but martha is dead!

anyway back to the shopping. we went into the store and i had a huge list. lucien was being very cooperative at first but that didn't last too long. lol before long he was reaching around to the back of the cart to grab things to launch across the aisles. he is very good at throwing things far and fast. At one point he took the drinkable yogurt and when it hit the floor the little bottles came out of the package and shot everywhere. I bent down and dug around to find them all put them back in the cart and turned to get an item off the shelf.

well in that 2 seconds he had it in his mitts again and was launching it! aaahhhh i was so exhausted by this point i just wanted to leave the cart and walk out. but the thought of leaving all the damn groceries behind and having to go back and get them again later stopped me from doing that. i had to take a couple of minutes to try and catch my breath and try not to cry in the middle of the store.

he is just being a 2 year old but somedays i just feel like there is no way i can keep up. some days are good and i can actually run around with him and play rough the way he likes. but the bad days bring me down.........hard. i know my kids miss the mom they used to have and a lot of times i miss her too.

then this morning jewel comes to me at 8:15am and tells me her alarm did not go off and they just woke up. oy so what am i gonna do? i don't have a car and i really don't want to walk all the way to the school. I was up most of the night last night so at that point i was so not wanting to drag myself out of bed. So of course they wake up and start using the computer in the game room (just outside my bedroom door) and start arguing about how the sims house is set up.

they will argue about the most stupid crap!! the other day they were arguing about who had the prettier sims house and they literally got into a screaming match about it. ugh so anyway i shushed the cause i didn't want them to wake lu cause that is when i have to get out of bed. lol

well then they decide to try their hand at the wii...........sure go ahead just quit barging into my room like elephants to ask me about things!!!!!! a few more minutes and here come the elephants again.........we can't make it work............well hell i don't know how to fix that i never start that thing up and most of the time i have to ask marina for help. so i tell them to find something else to do and of course i get the attitude, huffing, stomping, practically slamming my door. of course this wakes up lucien and i get up.

now i am sitting here so freaking exhausted feeling like i could fall asleep at any minute. i'm achey, cranky, tired, hungry, and feeling like a bad bad mom.

there are toys all over my living room floor.........and blankets that marina spread out yesterday to play with lucien on and never bothered to clean up. i should be shampooing my carpet but i just don't have the energy today. I felt much better yesterday, today i feel like total poo.

oh and lucien has this thing with throwing his toys down the stairs. Well several times now he has thrown too hard lost his balance and fallen. well he did it again yesterday and just came tumbling down.........i almost re-broke my toe running to try and stop him from rolling all the way to the bottom. I was not fast enough and i almost had a heart attack. i was so freaked out and just knew that we were gonna be making a trip to the ER. I held him and he cried for a couple of minutes then he ran right back to the stairs. i'm telling you one way or another those stairs are gonna be the death of me..............i really hate them.

on a more positive note i have now made 2 batches of cold process soap. i had a heck of time finding lye locally but finally found it at ace hardware. the first batch came out great and has been cut and is now curing. I will unmold the other batch later today and cut it up to cure. I also have a couple of things i will be adding to the shop for valentines. i made some clay cupcakes, fortune cookies, lollipops and conversation hearts.

So i went to the doctor on wednesday. She told me that sometime in my life i had mono.........she wanted to know if i remember when i had it.......ummm nope. So my immune system is shot she said i probably feel like i'm walking around with the flu everyday. My chiro told me i had an infection when he did the nutritional testing and he said who knows how long you have actually had it.

Well i'm gonna blame it on Mr. Ford. He was a total man whore and would have slept with anything that would stand still long enough. lol and it is also my fault for not taking better care of myself at that point in my life. I guess i had this stupid belief that I was somehow invincible.......who doesn't when they are young?

So now i will be giving myself injections once a week. Chris said he couldn't do it cause the thought of needles creeps him out so much. Marina said she would do it but needles freak her out so i don't think she could follow through without lots of drama.........and an unneccessary amount of pain on my end. ;) i mean literally on my end........i am going to inject my thigh but she would inject in my hip.

I got the first one at the doctors office so they could show me & chris how to do it. Chris was sitting in front of me and she was behind me injecting it in my hip so he saw NOTHING. I'm standing there thinking i could be a total bitch and point it out to him but i figured no need to traumitize the poor wimp.....err i mean guy......by forcing him to watch.

The injection is going to help build up my natural energy slowly over six weeks. Hopefully after 6 weeks my body will continue to produce & store energy on its own. The doc said they have had an 85% success rate with other fibro & cfids patients, so i'm crossing my fingers. If it the injection helps but my body does not continue to produce on it's own i could probably keep receiving the injection weekly. OUCH I chose to give myself the shot because i don't want to travel to the docs office every week and pay the co-pay and the cost of the shot.

The doctors office is close to where chris works so too far for me to travel to weekly. And i only have to pay for the shot. They are $10 each and not covered by my insurance. I think they would consider it experimental like holistic health care. After 6 weeks i will go back in for more blood work and they will tell me how i am doing with the shots. I wish my mom was local then she could give me the shots.

In the meantime i am continuing with the pain medication. That sucks cause i don't drive anymore and it gets boring just hanging out all day. I did ask chris to leave the stroller here so hopefully lucien and i can go walking during the day. Something to get me out of the house. I hate relying on chris to drive me everywhere as most of my family knows. I'm a huge control freak and like driving, i always did all the driving now i'm like miss daisy. And we don't have public transportation out here in katy so i'm stuck like chuck.

there are some new pics of the kids in the family pics link. chris took them to the park and got a couple of cute shots before the batteries in the camera died. there are also pics from new years eve. We ended up laying around watching back to the future one and two. then we toasted the new year at 11pm. I didn't think i would make until 12.....but i did and so did the kids, well except for lucien. so we watched the ball drop at 12 and watched a ton of fireworks go off around the neighborhood. we watched from the windows cause it was too cold to go hand outside. our neighbors kids set some off at 12 that scared the bejesus out of me and made everybody else laugh.

Last night i made some different coasters for my brother. I had made some before with mario brothers characters and ceramic tiles. i was not happy with the way they turned out so i made a whole new set. I need to add another layer of resin and then put some felt on the back. i tried to make some with some old pics of me and my brother when we were kids. but the damn ink on the pictures keeps running even when i seal them before hand with spray sealer. i have to figure out how to do them without ruining the pics. I have some super cute pics from my parents old photo albums and i really want to make some kind of keepsakes for the both of us. i'll just have to keep experimenting until i get it right.

veronika i have your package ready to go all i have to do is finish up those coasters and then i will ship it all out.......finally. lol it was supposed to be xmas presents and i'm a slow poke so they are hella late.

CHRIST ON A CRACKER i'm in the garage and something upstairs just fell and made a huge bang. I'm pretty sure it was lucien knocking over a chair.........he loves to do that and it always scares the crap out of me. that kid is such a rowdy boy. lately everytime i try to change a poopie diaper (i know tmi) he fights me like i'm gonna make him eat the dirty diaper.

I don't hear any crying so that is a good sign but i better go check on the kids. I hate to say it but i'm looking forward to school starting again on tuesday, they have been on holiday break. they are so freaking loud i don't know how i survived homeschooling them. lol But chris says i did a super good job at it cause portia only had one b and all a's on her report card and jewel always has straight a's. She was one of over 400 kids in 4th & 5th grade chosen to participate in her schools spelling bee. Her teacher loves her and tells me all the time. :) I'm so proud of my little sprouts. Marina only has one more year of school and then she graduates. I can't believe i am old enough to be her mom. geez i'm oooolllllddddd