Sewing Room, Office, and Craft Room - SOC room?

My Sewing, Office, Craft room is just about finished!  I am very happy with it.  Here is the main wall:

Here is the sort-of-before post.  If you follow me on Pinterest, you may have seen my "sewing/craft room" board.  I have implemented several ideas I collected there.  However, I must say that this spot is MY spot and most of the things in it represent something sentimental in my own life.  I doubt anyone else would love it as much as I do.

 I'm okay with that. 

I have my sewing on the left and office and computer on the right.  These things can easily be moved if the work space was needed for something else like scrapbooking or for doing other crafts.

Here are the details, from left to right:

The floral pink piece of art was painted by my Grandmother, Dee Dee.  More about her later. She was very creative and talented.  It seemed only appropriate to have something of hers in here.  A photo of her is also on the desk.

The wall decor under SewCute (purchased at Joann's) is made of 6 art canvases purchased at Michael's, and I just wrapped and pinned some of my favorite fabrics on them. The peg boards below were also purchased at Michael's (a box of 3, on sale!).  I don't really know what to do with them yet-you know, since I have all those fabulous DRAWERS now!  I will definitely hang more thread on the spool holder.  I also hung a little ribbon with mini clothes pins to hold photos of those for whom I've made quilts!  Fun!  I hope that the number of photos grows and grows.

The things on this shelf just make me smile. (Oops, I see a photo falling sideways!). Almost every item has meaning to me.  I won't bore you about each and every item, but will give a few highlights. The top shelf has a hand-sketched Christmas card from the 50s made by Dee Dee.  The little wooden doll was given to me by my dear mother, and it says, "You Are my Sunshine".  She used to sign every card and letter to me with that phrase. Sigh...

The wooden vase is hand -carved and purchased in the Dominican Republic when I was there as an LDS missionary.  The little framed cross- stitch piece is of the Seoul, South Korea LDS temple, made for me when we lived there in the early 90s by a lovely sister missionary.  I have a few wonderful Willow Tree statues given to me by people I love.  My children's senior pictures are here, and a sign from B that says, "If at first you don't succeed, do it like your mother told you".  I wonder how his new wife would feel about that?  Hahaa...    I cross-stitched the I Heart U sign for hubby many years ago.  I stole it back.

I of course included Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf's statement, printed from a printable on Pinterest, about creativity from a talk in October 2008, 


"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul".

Bless this young woman who created this beautiful way to depict that important statement.  I look forward to lots of creating going on in this room.

Can you see the little teeny high-heeled pump on the bottom left shelf?

 That was my mother's.  It's a pin cushion.  I have always loved it.  It still has a few of her pins in it.  She always wore high heels - how appropriate.

Here's the wall on the right.  Nothing too exciting for you, but it speaks volumes to my heart and spirit.

The desks are from Ikea and were super easy to set up.  Hubby put the drawers (all those WONDERFUL drawers!) together for me.  Love.

Ok, on to more spots in the room:

This is the main piece that was inspired from Pinterest and from this blogger.  She designs fabric - how cool is THAT??  Wow.  Anyway, we did ours slightly differently.  I had wanted a longer cutting table than she had. We took two of the Expidit Ikea bookshelves and laid them on their side, and then bought one smaller one for the end unit.  At first we were going to have a big piece of wood-something cut to make a longer board than the one she has in her photo that would have covered the entire top area of these bookcases.  But, after I put my big white cutting mat on this, I liked it as it was.  We didn't push the two long bookcases up flush to each other, but there is a slight gap in between to make the mat fit better.  It is not secured - we will see if I regret that later.  If I do, we will try something different.

The end book shelf is empty for now - I am looking for hanging-folder baskets to fit right in there.  I have lots of files to go in them!  I am having trouble finding them.... sigh.  The basket on top has things in it that I love - little photo albums, Shel Sliverstein books (the best EVER!!), my Wicked program - just things to pick up, browse through, and feel a little joy.  It's my JOY basket, I suppose.

These shelves in a little cubby next to a closet are nothing fancy, and I want to replace a few of the boxes.

The white box on the bottom sits on a two-drawer file cabinet. Pretty boring, but necessary.

Can you tell I have a label maker?  YES, I do.  I love it.

The master-bedroom part of this makeover is not finished yet. You'll have to wait for that. Dang.

While I worked to prepare this room, I found myself thinking of my grandmother (Mom's mom), Ida Mae, who we grew up calling Dee Dee.  Dee Dee walked to the beat of a different drummer during her time.  She was very creative and loved beautiful things, floral things, shiny things.

I also thought a lot about my own dear mother, who patiently began teaching me to sew when I was ten.  Bless her dear heart.  What a gift they both gave me to desire to create, and to have some skills to do so. I think they would both be pleased with this space, and would have loved to sit in it and create with me.

I guess I'll have to WAIT a little while to find out....