A giveaway, a workbench and a clean(er) garage

I won a $50 Home Depot gift card (and some awesome outdoor cleaning supplies) from Stacy at Not JUST a Housewife and I knew what I wanted to buy with it before it came in the mail!

Home Depot had this wood workbench for $69!  I saw Karen here at Sew Many Ways talked about this bench so I went to the Home Depot looking for it, checked it out and it was perfect!  First I had to make room for it…

So, on this beautiful day, I started to clean out my garage.  I swept up this pile of stuff…yep, that’s a frog mummy and that’s entirely fake money.  Lots of flat marbles and a vintage tootsie roll.  That was just the highlights…

So anyway, I digress…I dry walled one who side of the garage (with the help of a friend who got me started), replaced the insulation, added some insulation and painted it all up.  Eventually I want to dry wall the entire garage so I can work in there year round.

I gave away tons of stuff, sold some stuff and cleared off all sorts of shelves.

I found this wooden crate on wheels that my son had some play guns and toys stored in and cleaned it out and put all my wood scraps in the crate.  It rolls and is larger than the Rubbermaid tote the wood scraps were falling out of!

I reinforced the bottom of the crate and oiled the wheels and stacked the wood inside.

May not be pretty but it did the trick!!

Here’s the finished project with the new wall behind it and everything stored neatly.

And here is the workbench, I hauled it home from the store in the back of my Toyota Corolla…it’s seven feet long.  It comes out of the box and unfolds and is ready to use!  I painted the horizontal surfaces (with paint left over from the walls) to protect them.

The blue light in the pic above is just a plug-in swag I found 80% off at Hobby Lobby.  It was $11!  Works perfectly…I screwed a cup hook into the shelf above the work bench. I also have a stylish drop light for more lighting if needed…bet you want one too, huh?  So anyway, it may not be gorgeous, but it is a great work space for me with lots of room to create!  And hey, did I mention it was only $19 for me???  Oh, plus tax of course!

Some of my first projects on my new bench…

More about these later…

I will be linking to some of these great parties!

Cuteness for the craft room

These are really cute little craft room signs I made for Sarah for our bi-monthly gift exchange for June. I paid nothing for the rectangle and square pieces of wood (leftover from other projects) but I did have to pay a whopping 50 cents for the photo holder. 

Underneath that cute scrapbook paper is the word Girlfriends and a daisy.  I filled in the word with spackling about five times before I gave in and realized it was still visible under the coral spray paint.

So anyhow I lost that battle but love the way the scrapbook paper looks too!

The sayings I found online some where and just printed them off and Mod Podged them to the sanded and painted boards.  Covered it all with a few coats of Mod Podge and it was done!

I am making one of the creativity signs for my craft room too!  Somehow it seems to fit my life story…

 

I am linking to these great parties!

A new craft room shelf…free!

Remember here where I spent my $75 gift card to Lowes?

Part of what I bought was this shelf and the wooden brackets which I painted peacock blue (also with some paint from that same gift card). 

Love those brackets!

I am now storing supplies (and some pretties like the wooden spools and the seashells) in jars on this shelf above my sewing tables.  I made the knobbed lids for the jars (you can read about them here) and store ribbon, elastic, some zippers, special buttons, and other sewing supplies there so they are off my workspace and easy to find.

I have a few thrifted wooden boxes up there too to store paints and some cones of thread. 

Bias tape is stored along side the Keep Calm and Craft On print that my niece gave me a few years back. 

I love having this all on display within easy reach and I hung it on the wall all by myself. 

I may be linking to some of these great parties! 

Chalkboard for my sewing room

I had seen my sister’s chalkboard for her sewing room and have had chalkboard envy ever since.  I made one for my office, but still hadn’t made one for my sewing room.  Until now…it finished it today!

Don’t laugh at my artwork!

I found the frame in the 80% off aisle at Hobby Lobby…it was a custom frame, only cost me $7.50!  I usually buy frames at Goodwill or other thrift stores, but this one was perfect!

I used about four shades of ocean blue (shocking choice huh? Seems like I am painting everything this color!)

Tomorrow it will be hung in my sewing room and I hope to use it to list my To Dos.  I am a list maker, so it will be great to keep track of what I need to make and cross it off the list when it is done!

I distressed the frame a bit, but not much.  At first I used Martha Stewart chalkboard paint, but it was too glossy….I used several coats and followed the directions, but it was too glossy to hold the chalk. So I went back to the cheap chalkboard paint and used the same type of board and it worked great!  Not sure what I did wrong, but anyway…live and learn!

I am linking to these great parties!

Random Ramblings

I went to Hobby Lobby this evening to pick up some fabric for some binding for a quilt…I found this burlap chevron and striped printed ribbon…

And these burlap flowers…

And they had printed burlap by the yard, some with Paris theme prints.  All so cute, one was a coffee print!  I could think of so much to do with them, but I am trying to do some stash busting!  I took a big stack of dog blankets I sewed up for the Humane Society dogs to their office today.  That left a small space on my closet shelf and I figure it helps out a dog or cat or two as well!

Love this wall hanging at HL as well.

And these crazy Dr. Seuss-ish flowers.  Just fuzz balls on a stem!

The sunset last evening was so beautiful!

I sewed all day Monday…also worked a bit on organizing my craft room.  I got the ribbon organizers for Christmas and hung one on the wall and placed one on the shelf beside my sewing table.

Milo sat and watched me while I sewed…he wanted me to play with him!

Speaking of Milo, he has a new girlfriend…she just moved in across the street and they are innnnn love!

They run around and wear each other out, they are both puppies so they are both clumsy and so fun to watch!

They truly have tons of energy!

I updated some of my etsy listings for the Mizzou badge reels.  That was long overdue!

Working on making over this little table for my office…it turned out really cute!

Did a bunch of sewing…made this pouch for diapers/wipes for my niece…you can read more about that here.

And I made a protective padded case for my new laptop! 

And I also bound two quilts that had been waiting for me for months!  That’s about it…hope you are having a great week!