Sylvia's Simple Shots

I am so enjoying the sunrises from this new place.  I want to take pictures nearly every morning.

There were some very sunless days last week when the snow came that I am appreciating the sun.

There's been a lot of stuff to deal with this week. Problem solving 101.

The black shelf in the craft room was stacked to the ceiling with envelope boxes filled with craft supplies which is not great for air circulation. The iris cases at 15 inches in the closet were difficult to remove with the door open.

Solution: Move the iris cases to the black shelf in the room which provides air circulation. 

Move the envelope boxes to the black shelf in the closet as they are 11 inches deep.  

It is easy to remove the envelope boxes from the closet shelf with the space available with the door open.  I took the time to label all the boxes as well so that things are easier to find. 

I also looked at the contents and emptied 2 of the envelope boxes in hopes that they would all fit in the closet.   As you can see there is still one on the shelf with the iris cases.  Purging is a difficult process and I am grateful I have accepted the limited space in this new place.

That works so much better.

There was room on top of the die cut station to expand so I added a plastic shelf.  Too bad I don't have another wooden shoe shelf. I will work on that. 

The shelf was barely tall enough to have the red baskets under it.  They hold thin dies so they are quite heavy. I needed to extend the height of the shelf a bit.  I immediately thought bottle caps but a trip to the parkade where we collect returnables found all the bins empty!  Plan B.  

I chose Gutterman sewing thread spools that come apart.  I was able to put the one piece from the bottom of the leg and put the small piece in the leg from the top.  I used the dowel to reconnect the pieces inside the leg.

It is good that I did not have to cut the spools so when another shelf comes I can just take this solution apart and return the spools to the sewing desk.

Problem solving every day of the week it seems.

I finished this book this week. Always Dakota by Debbie Macomber.

It takes place in Buffalo Valley, North Dakota. The place is growing, businesses are opening, and people are moving in.  It is becoming a good place to live. 

Stalled lives are moving forward. 

Rancher Margaret Clemens loses her father and marries the man of her dreams, Matt Eilers.  Town folks are not so sure.  Two unplanned pregnancies with Matt in the middle. What to do?

There was a lot of stress in this story which did not help with my super busy week. 

I see that this is the last in a trilogy.  I may look for the first 2 books.

My home phone was out from the 06 to the 10th. It took 75 minutes of my 100 monthly minutes to go through the hoops to diagnose the problem with my provider.  Once customer service did all they could they transferred me to technical support and indicated the wait was 45 minutes but not to hang up.  Luckily it was about 30 minutes when the person answered.  Then there was more checks to take place, more time on hold while that was done.  Then we will try some else and please hold. 

Finally, it was determined that a service call would be necessary.  It was booked for Monday, Nov 10th. I would be getting a text. I received at least 1 text a day for the following 4 days.  I am sure they see  it as customer service but it seemed excessive to me.  I wonder how many appts are cancelled.

Another Patrick Taylor books read this week.  An Irish Country Family by Patrick Taylor.  There are just a few I have not read.  It's like meeting up with family. 

We are back with Doctors Fingal O'Reilly and Barry Laverty in Ballybucklebo in County Down, Ireland. It's was focused on Barry and his years in medical school and internship at the hospital and then his time at medical practice on Main Street. 

He and Sue are frustrated when conceiving a child has proved more difficult than anticipated.  Tests and schedules take over the fun of procreating.   Donal, Julie and the kiddies finally return to their cottage which had a fire a while back.

A story about neighbours helping neighbours. Finlay steps in when a man proves aggressive with Alice a local shop keeper.

Many folks pitched in at the rebuild of the cottage. 

Support comes for Doctor Emer who is temporarily working in the practice. Fingal and Kitty are happily married and looking to slow down.

I found a new to me YouTube channel. Laura Kampf is a DIYer all the way.  She is handy with all the tools - wood and metal.  Her passion is to prevent items hitting the landfill and making something useful with them. She makes useful scultpures - suitcases, lamps, furniture and much more.

I worked on a project this week to solve an issue that has been bothering me.

When I moved in there was a 2x4 piece of wood in the slide of the patio door.   It serves the purpose of making sure that the door can not be opened from the outside.  Great.

It is heavy, stamped with numbers, scuffed up and not pretty at all.

After considering just replacing it I decided that I should use what I have.  I chose to trim it down a bit but with only a hand saw the work was cut out for me.

It took 1.5 hours with 3 breaks to get it cut through.  Again, those clamps proved invaluable.  Once cut let us make it pretty.  I was going to paint it but did not really have too many choices.

In the end I chose Tung Oil was chosen. It fits in with the pine in the room and is good looking.

I had a trip out of town this week where I was away for 2 days to visit my sister, have lunch with her kids and grandkids as we celebrated a grandson's birthday.

I took the opportunity to sort through the rest of the boxes I had stored at her house since 2022.

This was my photo studio stuff mostly which of course needs to be scaled down significantly. I put aside everything that was really easy to decide and we took a large box to the second hand store on Saturday/

I do have boxes in the car that need to come in and the harder decisions will have to be made.  At least, it all here and I can move on.

A zuchinni chocolate cake using the recipe my other sister used for the cake at my house warming.

His cousin decorated the cake and there were candles which were lit and blown out all at once.

He is becoming a tall and a very good teenager.

Lunch was pizza on their new expandable table set up in their dining room.

Busy Busy Busy!

Major Clean Up, De-clutter, Storage and Organize - Craft space & Photo Studio

I did decided I needed to do some major clean up and de-cluttering with the goal of having ALL card making supplies in the craft space.  This necessitated getting rid of a lot of supplies.  I have been mulling this over for several months.  

 

Finally, I decided to keep my Stamping Up supplies and cull the unrelated stuff for this reason. I have card stock, designer paper, ink, watercolor, chalks, ribbon, brads, and some stamps that all coordinate.  I have enough to last me the rest of my card making career.  I am keeping 110lb for photo cards too.

I started by removing all the non SU designer paper from my 8 color coded drawers.

Then, I took the 4 drawers of SU designer paper which were crammed to overflowing and sorted them into the 8 color coded drawers. It was a bit tough because SU paper comes in sets which are organized by color collections - Brights, Subtles, Regals, and Neutrals rather than colors.

Now, I had 4 empty drawers.

I then looked at the Iris cases in the bedroom that held 12x12 designer paper.  I kept the special papers like metallic, no shed glitter, and vellum pieces which translate well to Stampin Up.  That is what is in that bottom drawers.   Look 3 empty drawers!

I have a large box overflowing of designer paper to get rid of.  I will hold onto it for a couple of weeks in case I remember a few pieces I want to pull back.

 

 

The card stock cupboard needed to be addressed as well.  A while ago I had moved 8.5x11 Stampin Up card stock to this cupboard but now the 12x12 card stock had to be moved as well.

It was being stored in the dining room secretary along with table linens so it was time it moved.

The left is 8.5x11 card stock and the right is neutrals and 12x12 card stock on the bottom.

The middle shelf holds the boxes for my 2 projects - Compassion House and Cards for Seniors.

Here's the bottom shelves of the secretary in the dining room.  

I have added a few plastic containers to organize. The top shelf holds small vases, small bottles, charger plates, place mats, and a grey box of table runners and doilies.

The bottom shelf is a container of napkins and table cloths on the right hand side.

There is room for a few pieces if I decide something new in the future.

I now have 7 Iris cases that are EMPTY!

This is the photo studio area and you can see in the right hand photo that I have filled some of them with Macro Monday props. Clear cases which are well labels so I can quickly find what I need.  

I don't know what I will use the empty ones for just yet.  I can live with them empty for a while and get used to the space.  Having spend the time to empty them I will be sure to fill them with plenty of thought!   SO HAPPY!

Photos - Organizing, Storage and Decluttering

I've been working really hard at de-cluttering and creating a place for everything.  Two years ago I added drawers to my craft space which helped a lot.

Top: The boxes in top photo are on top of the black shelving unit in my craft space.  Check here for a photo.  I have always stored them wide which meant they were stacked 3 deep which makes getting to the bottom one was not fun. They were too wide for the shelf as well so the last row on the right were precarious at times. Just by turning them on their side I can get them all in less space and only 2 deep which means less hassle to get to the box I want. Really happy about this.

Left: A new shelving unit to store all the stuff that did not have a home.  I now know exactly how much stuff I have and must stop buying!! The large containers hold yarn and silk flowers - perfect for the top shelf. I will have to organize the contents of pizza boxes and iris cases but I least I can see them all at once now.

Right: I bought an Ikea narrow Billy bookcase which sat perfectly in the space next to the black shelf in the craft space. This stores card stock and 3 classes/project cases.  It will keep the light and dust out and maintain the quality of the paper.

Left: I had a bit of space under my work table which could be used if I had a storage solution.  I knew it had to be drawers again.  I managed to these narrow drawer units a Walmart and they fit perfectly.

Center: I found that I saved boxes in case I needed one but there was no specific place for them to be so again I did not have any idea what I had so I needed a place. With that comes tissue paper, bubble wrap, gift bags, etc.  Home Depot had these containers on sale for $4 each so for less than $20 I got all I needed. What did not fit here went to the recycle center.
Right: I re-wrapped my work surface with new black contact adhesive vinyl.  This station is right across from the large metal shelving unit so it gives me a place to open a box I've pulled off of there and look inside. There's a better chance it will return to it's place if I don't move it too far away.