taking the craftiness to another level

i've been on an organizing kick lately.  this is a good thing, especially for the hub whose frustration over what he calls my hoarding tendencies is never-ending.  the old lady has been a huge help to me as i go through stuff i haven't looked at in a long time, making me either toss or add items to the growing donation pile we've got going.

as you can imagine, my sewing supplies are a little out of control - this includes fabric, notions, accessories.  i've got several machines (regular sewing, serger, coverstitch) and it's been kind of crazy juggling the three of them on my desktop.  and so i decided to shuffle things around a little, moving the computer to the corner to make room so that they all are arranged nicely.  and then i saw this on facebook in one of my sewing groups (yes, i belong to quite a few of those):

sorry, random person whose photo i swiped for inspiration.  i don't remember who it was, but you totally lit a fire under my ass to make one of these pegboard organizers for myself.  after perusing a few blogs and websites with instructions on how to do just that, the old lady and i headed to home depot.

this is always comedy hour, let me tell you.  neither of us is particularly handy in that way, and even after flagging down an employee for help we were pretty clueless as to what we needed to do.  i explained to the employee what we were trying to do, even showed him that picture, and he just kind of pointed to things and mumbled that he wasn't allowed to help us any further.  nice.

so we picked out some moldings that we thought would look nice to create the frame around the pegboard we'd found.  it was precut to about 2' x 4', and so we tried to figure out the measurements including mitering the corners to accomplish our objective.  it wasn't easy, but there was a lot of laughter.  and yes, i made her do the sawing.  she acted like she was annoyed, but i know she wanted to do it.

but when we realized that we hadn't accounted for cutting the corner on the other end of the molding, we gave up.  the miter box wasn't cooperating, we needed to pick up the bean, and we were just over it.  she was rather proud of the one end she'd managed to do, though:

the next day, while she was at work, i decided to head out to ikea to see if i could find a ready-made frame that didn't cost an arm and a leg.  ikea didn't disappoint, and i found a perfectly nice one that seemed sturdy enough to hold my pegboard and accessories.

as you can see, the pegboard needed a little trimming down.  i wasn't excited to do this part, but after looking up a few things online i decided to suck it up and get it done.  i put a piece of painter's tape down on it and marked the line where i needed to cut, and then i headed out to the garage to see if i could even find the damn saw.

a couple of deep breaths later, i jumped right in.

it went really well until the very end...when i managed to munch off a chunk of the painted side of the pegboard.  dammit.  i took it inside and placed it in the frame - thank goodness it did, indeed, fit - and here's what i ended up with:

not too bad, i guess, right?  i had an idea in mind to cover it up, but i had to open the variety box of pegboard hooks and things i'd bought.  and, um...let's just say there were a lot of things in there that i had no idea what to do with.

but in the end, i managed to pull my shit together and got it figured out.  i still need to find a couple of other things to hold some things i want to put up there, but here's what i have so far:

i wasn't at all sure that the hub would love the idea of putting this thing on the wall.  and i needed his help to do that, so i had to hope that this would get his stamp of approval or i'd done all that work for nothing.  here's where i wanted to put it:

and when he saw it, i was super excited that he liked it.  was even proud of me for getting it done.  hahahahahah.  good thing he wasn't present for the process.  i would never have gotten through it between his critique and bursts of laughter, i'm sure.  anyway, he suggested that i change it to a vertical board and we could hang it in the little corner to the side of my machines instead, and we could decorate the wall i had in mind in another way.

so yeah.  all's well that ends well, right?  and now my sewing junk is somewhat organized!  next up...the bean's room.  dun dun dunnnnnnn.

cuckoo for cookie cutters

my name is wan, and i'm addicted to cookie cutters.

seriously, i have about four bazillion and two cutters in all different shapes. some i have in several sizes, and there are metal ones and plastic ones. i bet you i could whip up a cookie in pretty much any shape you can think of...or at least get really close. it's kind of crazy, really. 

i've attempted to keep them somewhat under control, sorting them into a bunch of different plastic tubs and labeling them to make it easy to find the one i need. but they were getting out of hand in a big way, and they were rapidly outgrowing the shelf i had them on. 

so one day, i finally got tired of trying to shove them back into place and decided to do something about it. the teen helped me pull all of the boxes down and re-sort them into new categories that make more sense. 

we relocated the broom and mops into the garage, bought an inexpensive wire rack system, and moved the boxes into place. 

look, so nice!

i should probably be mortified at how elated i was when this was done. this is my life, folks. exciting shit, huh?

yeah, yeah, 5K, blah blah blah

first off:  happy birthday to my favorite birthday princess, mommybelle!  she's the only one i know who loves her birthday as much as (if not more than) i do, and i hope she has a wonderful day.  love you, hobag!

are you getting super sick of my race recaps yet?  i guess they're all starting to blur together, and yet i continue to blog them because - well, i can.  heh.  and besides, 2013 goals!

my second 5K of the year was kinda awesome, mostly because it was so close to home that i actually got to sleep in for it.  and i even earned a foursquare mayorship along the way...at the san dimas senior center.  haha!  so awesome.  i checked in the night before as i picked up my bib:

and then the next morning when i arrived for the run.  with an 8:30 start time, i rolled in around 8:15 and it was fabulous.

well, fabulous...but cold.  and before those of you who live in areas that are accustomed to freezing temps have a good chortle over this, remember that this is southern california.  for us, this is damn frigid.

luckily, i only had to stand around for a few minutes before it was time to gather at the start line and wait for the gun to go off.

the course was one that i'm pretty familiar with, except that i usually take the easy way out and do it backwards.  and why?  because when i run it my way, i avoid most of the inclines and coast downhill for most of it.  but i powered through it at a pace slightly slower than my usual, and before i knew it, i crossed the finish line.

by the time it was over, it had warmed up a little.

i mentioned before that i'm going to make myself a nice quilt with all of the t-shirts i've collected from all of my runs.  well, along with those shirts, i've been saving all of the bibs too.  until about a month ago, i had them hanging on a display plaque i'd crafted all by myself.  it held all of the bibs as well as my sweet little stash of medals.  and then one night the weight of all that hardware was just too much for that homemade rack and it came crashing down, yanking the hooks right out of it.  so sad.

so i headed to michael's armed with a couple of 40%-off coupons, picked up a few supplies, and now my bibs are organized nicely in a scrapbook.  they're all in calendar order, with the date and my time written neatly on the page along with a photo from the race.

also, i now have a ridiculous collection of safety pins.

i'm still trying to figure out what to put in that little window on the cover, though.  any ideas?

my brother the label maker

so my friend quirky and i have a super old inside joke about one of our former co-workers.  i don't remember exactly how it goes, but quirky was doing some organizing at the office and needed to borrow the label machine.  ditzy was the office secretary at the time and said machine was in her jurisdiction, so quirky called her to get access to it.

i don't remember if ditzy just couldn't hear or really didn't understand what was being asked of her, but the punchline to this whole thing ended up being "what?  your brother's a label maker??" in kind of a high-pitched, shrieky voice.

okay, maybe it's not all that funny for o'yous who weren't there.  but it still makes me giggle when i think about it.  and my telling this story is actually pretty redundant to begin with, considering the label machine i just bought isn't even a brother.  oh, well.

so anyone who knows us very well knows that i am a complete slob, and the hub is my polar opposite.  my slovenly ways are the bane of his existence, and i try, but we all know how lazy i am.  anyway, he'd recently opened the door to my baking cupboard and lost his shit.  i had all of my baking paraphernalia and various ingredients and boxes and ziploc bags and little containers of sprinkles and things shoved every which way in there.  and while i knew exactly what's in there and where it all is, it looked pretty bad.

and so i decided to fix it.  i got a wild hair up my ass one morning, made a list of stuff to buy at target, bought it all after work, and dug in after picking up the teen from school.  the bean was napping, and it was the perfect time to squeeze the task in.  i actually had fun going through it all and making it look nice and neat, and so i present to you the before:

yeah, i know, pretty ugly.  but check out the after!

and now i want to label everything in the house.  we may have created a monster.

the holidays are near

i love, love, love the holiday season. i really do. people are always so much nicer and there's an air of excitement wherever you go. i sent out my first order of holiday cards this week, and i'm halfway through the second. and you already know we did our annual family photo shoot for our own christmas cards this past weekend.

my beloved ryan seacrest talked about the upcoming holiday season on his radio show yesterday. with the state of our economy these days, he seems to think that a bit of holiday cheer is desperately needed right now. of course, this could go one of two ways - folks will either cheer up, or they'll get even more pissed off if they've been affected by the craziness of the financial situation and can't afford to do up the holidays like they usually do.

and then that fool cued up some actual christmas music. we were treated to the smooth stylings of barry manilow (of course, another favorite of mine - no sarcasm) and then a bit of whiny mariah, singing "all i want for christmas is you." a classic, yes? [eyeroll]

in other news, i haven't been able to sleep very well lately. i don't know why - i'm not stressing out about anything in particular, but the last few nights have been the same. i go to bed at regular time, wake up thinking that it MUST be morning by then, roll over and peek at the clock, only to find out that it's all of 12-freaking-30. yikes. and the night before last, a thought popped into my head: i really need to organize my cardmaking supplies. in a big way.

in our old house, i had much easier access to all of my stuff. plus, it was more visible, so i was forced to keep it a bit more organized than it is now.

old house:


now:

what a mess. not to mention, i've got a lot more crap now than i did then, like spools and spools of various colors and widths of ribbon in bulk. so i decided i'd reorganize the two closets, buy some dowels or really narrow curtain rods, and hang 'em up. easy peasy.

target didn't have what i wanted, so i hit up home depot, where i was amused/bemused/amazed at the giant selection of christmas decorations already out. we aren't even past halloween yet! sheesh. even my holiday-loving ass refuses to bust out christmas decor until thanksgiving is officially over. right now, i'm still in the mood for this:

but they're already selling this:

dang.

anyway, i managed to find what i needed and got the hell out of there. home depot is normally one of my least favorite places to go. bleh.

when i got home, i played with the bean for a bit. she's been cracking us up with all sorts of silly faces lately, and this one is her current favorite. if i make it at her first, she'll giggle and then make it right back.

after we'd read a few books and played with her toys for a bit, she settled down and played quietly by herself while i dragged out a couple of those boxes of paper goods from the supply closet. i wanted to get all of my paper source stuff out, separate it by size and type, and then make a list of what colors i had so that the next time i need something, i can check my stock quickly and figure out if i need to make the trek out to the store or not.

i came to the realization that i could damn near open my own paper source store. and this isn't even everything i have.

heh. okay. paper source inventory, check! next up, inventory of that vast ribbon supply.

and don't worry. i'm not going to bore you with a play-by-play of operation organize paper goods. i might post a picture of the finished project, but i'm even boring me at this point. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.