craft room redo: part 1

So the past week or so I've been completely redoing my craft room. I'll share with you over the next week or two how I've been reorganizing and rearranging!! I'll start with one of the more simple redo's in the room, but has a huge impact! I found some fabric that I LOVE and I needed to hide some of the functional yet unsightly organizational pieces that are under two of my crafting desks.

Enter, the table skirt! Now I did a super simple version because we'll be moving in a few months, so I didn't want to spend a lot of time making skirts for this particular room layout, since I may not even have a craft room in a few months!! Anyhoo, I simply cut the fabric down and added some sticky-back velcro, and voila! Instant table skirt :) I intentionally didn't wrap the fabric around the entire side of the table on the right since the heatduct is under that edge of the table- don't want to block the heat, considering the current temps are in the negatives this weekend!!

Now if I had a permanent crafting room, I would have folded over and sewed the edges {as you can see, there are small frays here and there}, sewed the velcro to the fabric for some extra strength, and included a split down the middle of the skirts to make easier access to the tools underneath. I probably would have added a ribbon border at the top edge too.

I hope you enjoyed this little transformation, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!!! :D

.: linking up to :.

Motivate Me Monday

Craft-O-Maniac Monday

Making The World Cuter Monday

Metamorphosis Monday

The DIY Showoff

My Crafty Weekend

metamorphasis tea

.: BEFORE :.

So, imagine, if you will, three kitchen cabinet shelves full of boxes and tins of tea, stacked and crammed in whatever way they can fit, haphazardly shoved in wherever there's room.... well, that was my cabinet. I didn't get to take a photo, unfortunately, but trust me, it was ugly!

.: AFTER :.

What you now see before you (well, below, really) is our newly revamped kitchen cabinet! We have a TON of tea. Both DH and I love us some tea, pretty much every kind of tea too, so between us, we have a boatload of tea. So, let me take you on a tour....

Yup, that's our cabinet! I'm a bit proud, I'll be honest :) And it's been that way for over a month now, so I'm quite pleased that it's withstood the test of time. I think that's the real organizational test... if you can actually maintain the organization, then that's a pretty good bet that it's a GOOD organization method :)

Anyhoo... I started by emptying out the cabinet. It covered about half of our counter, and we have a fair amount of counter space! I'd been saving the clear plastic containers that we get our bulk foods in, and they came in quite handy when redoing this space. Our very top shelf (only pictured above) has our surplus boxes of tea {usually I'll grab one of those boxes when we travel and toss it in my bag} and our hot chocolate tins. Then the middle shelf....
We have four plastic containers that fit perfectly around the lil white wire shelf. The top two containers hold my green and black teabags. The bottom two containers hold my white and red tea bags. Then there's two tea tins {please note the "Official Unbirthday Tea"- it's an Alice in Wonderland themed tin from Disney, hehe, it's a green tea, love it!}. You can see in the first photo that there's also some more tins and boxes off to the right. They're less frequently used and stacked nicely, so I decided to leave them be.... then we move to the bottom shelf....

I've had these lil containers floating around doing various jobs throughout the years. They're per-fect for holding tea bags! Just the right size- love it! The left two containers are all DH's teas. The right container has "our teas" {ones that we both like}- Numi's puerh teas and Tazo's Passion tea, an herbal fruity tea.

My favorite tea? Well it's actually in a tin on the counter. It's Wegman's loose leaf decaf British Breakfast. I usually have a least one {if not a few cups} a day, so it gets a special place of prominence outside of the cabinet.... ok, so it's not really a "special" place, it's wedged in between the sugar canisters and the utensil holder, but point being, it's out all the time since I use it so much ;) Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed our journey along my tea cabinet. Thanks for reading, hehe!

.: linking up here :.

Metamorphasis Monday @ Between Naps on the Front Porch

Whatever Goes Wednesday @ Someday Crafts

All Things Inspired @ All Things Heart And Home

Get Organized Party: Kitchen @ Domestically Speaking

Operation Organization @ Sassy Sites

Simplify for the New Year @ A Home Made by Kiki

metamorphasis baking

.: "baking shelves" transformation :.

---> before <---

so I do a fair amount of baking, especially with hubby deployed since he always asks for homemade goodies ;) so unfortunately our apartment's kitchen is somewhat lacking in storage, so my baking supplies are relegated to the shelves over the stove... rather irksome since I'm pretty short and can't really reach the top shelf :P anyhoo, there was so much stuff shoved in these two tiny shelves that anytime I needed an item, I'd have to take out four other items to get to it, which made for very inefficient baking.

---> after <---

I'd had enough of the disorganization, so recently I finally got around to reorganizing the shelves. I rearranged some other shelves as well, so some products moved over a cabinet, but it works out sooo much better! Some of my flours {rice, buckwheat, extra spelt} also now reside in the fridge where they'll last longer. The bins are Tupperware, and were a great deal of $10 for four nesting bins, at Walmart. I don't often shop there {as we don't care for their business practices} but I couldn't pass up this deal, especially since I'd been searching for a while for bins like these. All that's left to do is print up some labels with my new lil Dymo :)

top shelf: various nuts, baking cocoa, baking cups, and white chocolate chips.

bottom shelf: baking soda, baking powder, spelt flour, coconut, dark chocolate wafers, kosher salt, white sugar to use up {will be all raw sugar}, dutch-processed cocoa, powdered sugar, white flour {will be all low-gluten flour soon}

the mugs hold my piping supplies- tip, reusable bag, colors. on top of those are random products- some brown sugar to use up, yeast, shortening. In the center/right area are bottles of vinegars- cider, white, red.- agave syrup, vegetable oil, straws.

participating in::

Metamorphasis Monday @ Between Naps on the Front Porch