tis a beautiful thing..

my new sewing & crafting table all ready to go!

my sewing machine & overlocker live on the top, in season fabrics, machine pedals & rubbish bin underneath...
the plastic drawers hold works-in-progress (sewing & knitting), patterns & tracing paper (ok, el cheapo baking paper ;-) ), and felting fleece...
the built in drawers hold sharp things in the lockable one, felting & knitting tools in the middle, and sewing notions in the bottom...
and stashed in the back are my tracing/cutting board (aka hunk of MDF) & 1m/40" steel ruler.

the stack of fabric on the right, in front of our new curtains *insert happy dance here*, will live elsewhere, once there is an elsewhere for it to live in ;-)

doesn't it just bristle with potential?! :-D

lounge transformation!

in the beginning, there was this mess...
followed by some small changes, and then some bigger ones..

well yesterday i was struck by a giant fit of whim, and did this-

which turned into this-

and this-
(oh yeah!! my own sewing & crafting table!! bliss...)

and let's just not talk about this-
ok?

so i'm not exactly finished, but i'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel!

mammoth mission done!

before

and

after

thank you to my friends, trade me peeps (the remaining ones are listed currently), waipu SPCA and the New Lynn Lions foundation for helping me rid myself of a ridiculous amount of books!

now to fill them back up again with all the ones we kept.. *sigh* ;-)

what i would like..

would be to extract a few boxes of stuff from the house, then just walk away..

yup i have a major case of apathy & hopelessness..

it's not so much the deciding what to keep & what to get rid of that is the hard part (actually it's very easy!) it's actually getting stuff out of the house that i'm really struggling with, and also not being able to get rid of some stuff i hate ie- furniture because we can't replace it at the moment..

like on the recent tv show "the big stuff" they would tell the participants to toss anything that didn't 'fit the vision' of what they wanted their house/life to look like.. well that's all very well & good if a tv show if buying you new furniture & storage solutions for africa! But here in the real world we have to put up with a mish-mash of inefficient, unsuitable & asthetically displeasing items indefinately..

and again, it's a lot easier if you have a handful of free skips & recycling bins provided & dealt with afterwards for you too.. but instead we have flimsy rubbish bags, expensive dump fees, rare-as-hens-teeth (and possibly on the cutting board altogether!!) inorganic rubbish collections, and a sallies shop that never seems to be open! and don't get me started on 'buyer must pick up' auctions on trade me...

*sigh*

sorely tempted to set fire to the house, but a) it's under-insured, and b) the people in the adjoining house probably wouldn't thank us! (even though they have gutted their place twice in the past 4 years! ;-) )

play area finished!

the kids toy space is now pretty organised & streamlined.. from this to this-

bit nicer huh?

it's now very functional, especially with the addition of the lovely wooden table & chairs, and much more baby friendly too, with the dolls house off the floor, and smaller toys on the top shelf of the re-purposed bookshelf (hidden benefit to clearing out books!). Yes, we still have the castle, it is now home to a box of books, a box of dress-ups & playsilks, and a doll's cot full of dolls & teddies. The crates of wooden blocks & train tracks now live in cubbies under the dolls house, and the kids art work is now displayed in their own gallery on the wall too ;-)

and the toys are predominantly & increasingly made from natural materials too :-)

and i just noticed that we have an orange balloon in almost the same place in both the before & after pics! how odd, it's not like we usually have them, the first was from a birthday, this one is because lil' miss found a stash in our emergency kit! lol...