Busy, Busy, Weekend

Hey Bloggers!  Welcome to the middle of another week.  Summer is marching on, so be sure to take advantage of those daylight hours.  Soak up that sun (don't forget the sunscreen!) and enjoy the warm weather while you can.  It was an overcast, misty, rainy, kind of weekend for the Crafty Dad house, so we skipped the trip to the lake and, instead, worked in the basement.

In case you don't already know, I'm a pack rat.  In fact...I'm the King Pack Rat (any questions?  just ask my wife.  On second thought.....don't.)  I spend many of my lunch hours visiting Goodwill Stores and the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift shop.  It's amazing what I find there.  I'm a sucker for 'something for nothing' and can't seem to pass up a good deal.  Problem is, where do you put all this stuff?  Answer:  the basement.

Our basement is 50% finished so I can't stash my stuff there.  However...the other half is unfinished and you'd be surprised how much crap stuff you can store in there.  The shelves were overflowing, the counter-tops of my crafty corner were buried, there was stuff under the counter and all over the floor.  No.  I did not take any 'before' pictures.  That would be embarrassing.  I will get some 'after' shots taken so I can at least prove to you that I did clean up my mess.

A few months ago, I got a hairbrained idea that I needed a more permanent work space for all my projects.  When we remodeled the kitchen, I talked my wife into keeping the old counter-tops for a good reason:  me!  With my dad's help, we created a pegboard wall (I love pegboard) and a nice L-shaped work space.  It's nothing you'd find in a magazine or on the Ikea website, but it works for me and I enjoy working in my space (when I can actually find my space).

[Note to self:   STOP bringing sh!t home.  You have enough of everything.  You need to sit down and start making stuff so you can list it on Etsy or eBay or start making gifts for the upcoming Holiday season.]

I told my wife I would be happy to de-clutter, de-stash, whatever you want to call it, so long as she'd help me build ANOTHER pegboard wall.  She agreed.  [Love you honey!]  So, a couple weeks ago the boys and I went to Menards and bought some more 2 x 4's, two more 4 x 8' sheets of white pegboard (white makes the area brighter; the natural pegboards and way to dark for me), a box of long screws, a box of shorter screws (both in the square-head version, which I did not realize until this weekend.  [Thanks Dad for leaving the square driver bit with me!]

The wall is complete.  I even found a nice pair of cafe' curtains to cover the one and only window in the basement.  Touche'

Now...the de-cluttering continues.  I'm trying to have a critical eye towards all the crap stuff I have.  Some of my 'treasures' have been sitting around for quite some time....and I think it's time we parted company.  It sounds really strange, but some of the stuff I bought at St. Vinnie's is going back to, well, it's going back to St. Vinnie's.  [I can hear you laughing.....and I'll bet some of you have done the same thing.  Admit it.  We have a problem.  Perhaps there's a 12-Step Program for us.  "Hello, my name is Crafty Dad and I buy too much sh!t at all the Thrift shops within a 50 mile radius of my home."]  Please tell me there's hope for us.  Ah, but I digress -- big time.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the wall is up, the 1957 Singer 401(a) sewing machine has a home, the coverstitch machine (oh yeah, I had to have one those...) has a semi-permanent place to sit, the blindhemmer is still where he was (and that's okay for now).  The blindhemmer was a smart purchase (I can justify anything, okay?).  But really, we are short-ish people and most of the slacks we purchase need to be shortened.  The blind hemming machine is a godsend.

Now it's time to go thru the collection fabric and 'other stuff'.  I will be so excited to have some 'space' when I'm all done.  It will so cool to be able to escape to my crafty corner of the world and be able to do all those projects that I've had floating around in my head for so long.