My Craftroom - before cleaning!

I thought I'd share my craftroom with you. Sometimes it's very tidy... but inevitably the piles of stuff encroach on the working space until I'm left with about one square foot of desk and all the rest is piles 'o crap. Add in the large grey furry cat who insists on keepind me company, and there's nowhere to work at all! Such is the state today, and I've vowed to redeem it tomorrow. But first, the honest before photos, taken just a few minutes ago.

1. A view of the desk area, taken from as far back as I could manage to get. As you can see, right now there's more junk than space. Immediately after I took this photo a cat wandered across the desk, sniffed in disgust, and went away to find a flat surface with enough clear space to sit!

2. The pile-o-junk stuffed in the corner of the room, with my paper cabinet and junk collection. You can see the edge of my card display on your left. As swaps and cards come in I hang them over the slats of my closest door. It's about time to cull the ranks and to make room for more - my door is full!

3. The top half of my bakers' rack and paper storage area. The scrap paper, ribbon basket and card storage rack are the only part of the room I'm really pleased with atm!

4. The bottom half of my baker's rack, and my filing cabinet. The bottom drawer holds personal files, and the top has my papercrafting magazines/books and my postcard collection, for want of any better place to store it.

5. My Iris cart and paper tray, and some boxes-o-junk under the desk. Also some more of my card storage rack tucked in beside them. The cane basket has old paperwork which is probably mostly trash by now.

6. I almost forgot the last corner of the room. I have various supplies in the chest of drawers. The pink thing in the back corner is our hurricane cart (which sorely needs a complete redo before July), and the stuff on the floor is household paperwork. The brown chair is for guests to sit on when John works on their computer, and for the cats to use as a step up to my desk if they don't feel like jumping that high. Scouty tends to 'miss' her jumps when the desk is crowded, and if she's fallen to the floor once she doesn't want to try again that day! If you turn to your right you can just see the corner of John's desk. Right now his working space is MUCH cleaner and tidier than mine and he's putting me to shame.

So there you have it... the before photos. And as I get it tidied, I'll take the 'afters'...

Bad news, good news...

First the bad news. I've been struggling with de quervain's syndrome (thumb tendinitis) in my left hand all year long, and while it's a lot better than it was at first (in January I couldn't even  get a spoon or fork into my mouth because my wrist wouldn't bend!) I keep aggravating it. I can't pick up a pen to write, hold a pair of nail scissors (or the cat clippers), or play my flute, and I've realised that if I don't look after it properly it might not get better! Then I wouldn't be able to make cards at all and I'd be TRULY frustrated... I'm taking two weeks off all the activities that put a strain on my hand and that are avoidable to give it a better chance of healing. So no volunteering at the library (shelving books), no lifting, and no crafting. No matter how much my fingers itch to create a new card, I'm not going to do it unless I really have to. Please don't forget about me - I'll be back as soon as I can.

But there's also good news - I posted a card I made for a card contest on the Rubber Stamp Chat site - and I won first prize from Scrolls Work Stamps! I can't wait to spend my gift certificate on some more stamping goodies from their store ... I can't afford to buy stamps for myself unless they're in the bargain bin, so this is a great chance to fill in some of the gaps in my collection. I just HAVE to have this stamp for my OWH cards. :) 

I was also lucky enough to win some beautiful blog candy during the Operation Write Home blog hop a few weeks ago... Lori sent me some lovely ribbons, stickers and bling.  Check out her blog - Lori's Purple Giraffes. Thank you so very much Lori... your gift will allow me to make that many more cards for charity, as soon as my hand will allow me to do the work!

All the cards I make are for ministry - either for Operation Write Home, for card ministry through my own or other churches, or direct gifts to thank/cheer/uplift people through the mail. If/when my hand heals enough to manage it, my next 'order' is to make a bunch of cards for our local cat rescue group to help them raise funds to look after the furbabies. (I offered to do it in January and they said they'd love to get some cards, but I haven't been able to manage it yet. :( )
I don't have the money to buy a lot of supplies (I spend more than I should just on postage and cardstock!), so the occasional things that people give me are received with huge thanks. I would never sell or discard an item that was given to me, or attempt to profit from it myself. If I have too much of something or I really can't use it, I'll find another crafter who CAN use it and give it to them. So thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!!! I couldn't do it without you.

DH has a blog

Want to see a bit more of our daily life? DH has decided that he wants to get into this blog thing... and not being a crafter, he's writing about our cats and his techy stuff. And he uses photos. There's even a couple of me in there. :P Click the link to go see what he's been up to.

Tails Of... 

PS. No new cards today... my wrists are complaining vigorously that I've been overdoing the fine motor activity and I have to give them a rest so I don't have a real issue with them. I took yesterday off computing entirely and went shopping instead! I've packaged up my mother's day cards to send off to OWH and also packaged a couple of swaps, and that's it for my crafting activity for a few days.

About Me

Okay, I don't expect this particular entry to be of much interest to anyone else besides me... I've been trying to get my new blog set up, and the important stuff (like links) transferred over from my other one. It's a lot of fiddling around but I THINK I've got it now. I also made myself a banner for my heading... doesn't that just scream 'Kajikit' to you? I'm a very girly girl and I always have been - if I ever get too old for heart and flowers and butterflies, it'll be time to bury me! That doesn't mean I'm one of those people running around trying to be 15 forever - I'm well aware that I'm almost 40... lol! But you're only as old as you feel on the inside, which I think leaves me at about 25 forever. I hope I never lose my love of innocent things...

Here's a photo of me and my husband. It's a little old, but it's the most recent one I have of us together - this was taken at Thanksgiving last year.


And here are our three furfaces... Scouty and Silver are sisters and we adopted them from the animal shelter when they were six months old (and much MUCH smaller than they are now!) and Tessie adopted us a year later. I went outside one day and found her wandering around the building mewing pitifully and running up to everyone she saw to try to get SOMEONE to rescue her! I couldn't possibly leave her out there when she was only a kitten, and I couldn't find anyone looking for her, so I picked her up and brought her upstairs, and a week later she was officially ours... Tessie and Scout hate each other so there are very few photos of the three of them in the same place at one time. Most of the time Scouty sees Tessica coming and runs, which is Tessie's cue to chase her around the apartment until Scouty finds someplace to hide. They never actually HURT each other, they just make a lot of noise, but I don't blame Scouty at all for disliking the sister who does that to her several times a week!