Moving Day!!

As I have acquired more materials, supplies, stamps, paper packs, tools of the trade (I now have a Cricut Expression and a Cuttlebug, plus everything that goes with them), I’ve outgrown my little “studio” – one of the smaller bedrooms in our home. Even more of an issue for me than the size of the room has been the lighting. My little room had no ceiling mounted lights and both windows look out into the shadiest parts of the yard, so natural light wasn’t in abundance either. I tried task lighting, all kinds of lamps, but not with anything close to satisfactory light for working. And working in cramped quarters in a dark room was definitely getting in the way of my creativity.

My DH decided that a change was necessary when I set up a work table smack dab in the middle of our living room for the World Card Making Day challenges (and left it there for two weeks!). I wanted to be able to take advantage of the bright light from the sliders (two eight-foot sets) and the overhead track lighting, and to be able to “spread out”. We decided that over Thanksgiving, when my DS would be home from college and could lend some muscles to this effort, we would swap rooms with one of the rooms downstairs that is much larger, brighter, and has a ceiling full of recessed lights. I’ve been looking forward to it, debating how to arrange and organize things in the new space, and planning how I was going to slowly pack to move, so I wouldn’t face the same chaos we had the last time my studio was shuffled.

Two weeks ago, DH got up on a sunny Sunday morning and with a cheery smile, told me he’d decided to move my studio that day, no packing, no preparation, we’re doing it now. Our son had come home from college that weekend to make his annual visit to Spooky World and DH snagged him to help with the project. Another friend was able to rush to my aid and help me to pack things for two hours. Thank goodness that Monday was a holiday and I had help to finish the last of the moving and unpacking.

Then

Looking at the mess at the height of the move was enough to give me a panic attack. And this is with only half of my things moved down. The living room and dining room had piles of tubs of "things".... things I would have to sort and put away. Packing on the fly is never efficient. Everything was put in tubs and boxes, and everything from an area was supposed to be kept together. But in the interest of efficiency, when a tub was only 2/3 or so filled, my "helpers" tossed in anything they found that looked like it would fit. Still, we accomplished it in a day - and while it took an entire week to unpack, organize and get things the way I wanted, I'm grateful it's behind me!

Now

Now, two weeks later, with all of my things stowed in their new places, I stand in my new work space in awe.

I couldn’t wait to get back to work in full swing, which I was finally able to do last week. (Lord knows, I’m, woefully behind LOL.) Having everything organized in a space that is so light and bright and cheerful is something I had been dreaming about for ages and I feel almost overwhelmed by the reality.

And it happened in the nick of time for the VSN Mini Cabaret this weekend. What a pleasure it was for me, and best of all, since I had only recently unpacked and organized things, I was very familiar with many things I’d forgotten I even had, and able to put my hands on things immediately.

We still have some more work to do. We are going to install some cabinets and counters at some point, and the closet move still isn’t complete (saving much of that job for next weekend).

But I feel like a fairy princess in a brand new castle. My favorite thing? Easily, the work table in the middle of the room. It’s so nice to have such a large area to spread things out and work. And having separate areas that I can leave all set up for cutting, stamping, embossing, and designing is a major plus.