I'm beyond giddy! I actually have a craft room!!!

Holy cow!  I have a craft room!!!  This is a dream I thought I'd have some year when my kids left the house...so you know like 10 years down the line...but no, I HAVE A CRAFT ROOM!!!

 

I'm just a bit excited if you can't tell.  It took a lot of work to get there, but we're finally DONE!

 

Here's how it all came about.

 

This was my husband's library/study/man cave right after we got it all put together for him.  We painted it, put in chair rail and a custom shelf for all his shot glasses.  Over the last 4 years he added to it with cigar paraphernalia, a couple of cube storage systems to replace the shelves, a different desk, a tv and more, but then he wasn't in there very much.  So one day earlier this year we were talking randomly about what I'd do if I had a craft room when suddenly he piped up and said "You can have my room."  I was like "WHAT?!?" and he couldn't take it back!  I grabbed ahold of that statement and held on tight.  Over the next several months I bought paint, picked up a bunch of this and that's to use for the rooms transformation while ideas just flew through my head.  Here's how it all turned out...just bear with me cause there are a ton of pictures!

 

Bright yellow with white trim lightens up the room tremendously.  I painted the black cube units with white paint and distressed it with a grey wash.

 

I reused 3 canvases I had from a previous project for silhouettes of my 3 kids.  I wear aprons all the time so I added a 3M removable hook that I had in a junk cabinet in the kitchen.  I've had the butterflies stored in my craft supplies for a couple of years.  They were the perfect little "family" addition to my room.

I added the kids' nick names to their silhouettes just to take them over the top.

The butterflies represent our family...Hubby, me, the two boys and my daughter!

The top of the door needed just a little something so I went in search of a crafty, creative saying to make a vinyl.  This one just grabbed me because creativity IS my life!!!

Here's a piece my husband and I made together.  This is a Pinterest inspired project.  I needed something to store all my paint and I loved the drawer idea.  This was a very inexpensive project since I found the drawer at Habitat for Humanities Restore for only $4.00 and we had most of the wood already.

Remember that custom shelf for shot glasses?  Here it is all crafted up!  I wanted several things that represented most of the crafting things I love to do.  I think I found a way to incorporate most of them.

I kept the wine glasses we used at our wedding.  They're special since they're Czech glass and our last name is Czech.  I added some of the insulators I had in the living room and then my two Willow Tree figurines.  I wanted two big wooden spools of thread, but they're SO hard to find.  Instead I found a couple of mason jars (another love) filled with wooden spools (for sewing).  They had the perfect colors...more on that later.

 

For birds & decorative painting I have a little hand painted bird house.  Yes, I painted that myself!

I love flowers and hand painting, and I love the One Stroke painting.  I would love to take a class some day, but for now I'll just learn from You Tube and play!

For my love of vinyl and husband I added some vinyl to the letter "E" as a template for painting.  I also added another bird that I painted pink with chalk paint (another love) and dry brushed with white.

I love my ampersand.  For some reason ampersands are so cool...just go with it!  I also added a milk jar (love) of ribbon!  Then, of course, one of my first loves is scrapbooking so I had to add a stamp. 

Owls!  Who doesn't love owls!  And more mason jars with buttons!  And last but not least are two cups that mean a lot to my husband.  They're replicas of the cups used on "Hunt for Red October" one of his favorite books and authors.  Our oldest's name is actually inspired by the main character.  So those HAD to stay!  That completes the shelf and I LOVE IT!!!  It's not too cluttered but comfortably filled!

Here's my work center.  I thought I'd hate this desk...it was the one my husband had...but I was WRONG!  I love it!  The plan is to paint it later, but for now it's just going to get used.  There's also this cabinet that the printers are on.  We purchased that well over a year ago for the printers, but it wasn't till I started working on the elements for this room that it all came together.  We removed a drawer and added wood to make it a solid shelf for electronic components that were necessary to keep in this room.  It's a perfect fit!

I plan to have my silhouette on the desk quite a bit so I found a piece of trim left over from the printer cabinet and tacked it to the desk.  It keeps the silhouette from accidentally getting knocked off the side.  Again, a perfect fit!

Here's one reason I fell in love with this desk.  My silhouette and sewing machine fit in the side cabinet just an arms reach away!  That is when I actually put my silhouette away.

Another item that stayed in the room is this handy strip outlet bar.  It is amazingly handy for all the different things I need to plug in.  The desk area needed a little extra lighting so I found something we had yet again to fill the need.  My husband had converted this liquor bottle into a lamp and filled it with rocks.  He'd never found the right shade for it so it just sat there in his study unused.  I removed the rocks and added clear, iridescent marbles then I added a decorative shade that I customized with a special fabric.  This is the fabric that inspired all the colors in the room.  I have one more accent fabric that I used for my pressing board and as time goes on I plan to make some throw pillows covered in the two different fabrics.  Oh, and then there's the cork board...we'll get to that later!

Here's one of the first projects my husband and I worked on.  I purchased the rotating tool storage system at Harbor Freight & Tools and he spray painted them for me.  He's better at spray painting than I cause I'm WAY too impatient.  The clock is today's latest creation.  I needed some kind of time piece in there and I wanted to keep it inexpensive.  I just purchased a wooden embroidery hoop and a clock mechanism and used the inspiration fabric, some felt, cardboard and tacks to make the clock.

Let me just say this up front...my husband and I are NOT carpenters.  We could never carry that label, but we do like to tinker...and we have determination!  That's what this shelving unit took...determination!  I had a very small space left and needed a deeper shelf to hold scrapbooks and tubes with vinyl so Eric and I designed it.  We measured twice and cut all the shelves, but somewhere in the process something was off cause those middle shelves were a BEAR to get in.  Get them in we did, however, and this shelf works GREAT for my needs!

OH...I almost forgot a LOVELY and wonderfully functional little addition to my desk...a glued on measuring tape.  This has come in very handy several times in the last week.  A little E6000 and a lot of patience!!!

And of course I can't forget my find at a garage sale.  I found a popcorn tin for $.12 and had my hubby spray paint it in one of the accent colors.  It's the perfect size to put a shopping bag in as a liner and it holds a LOT...which is a great thing in my craft room!

Moving around to the back of the room you can see one of 3 frames I painted and added different backings to in the room.  The first was the green framed cork board hanging over the desk.  The second is this orange frame with a white board added to it.  The third I'll explain in a little bit.  It's my favorite by far!  Then we have the two bird cages.  Right now they're just hanging there looking pretty, but at some point I really want to turn them into pendant lights to hang in the corners of the room.  We've yet to figure out the best method to do that, so for now they'll just be decorations.

Here's the storage side of the room.  My husband had 3 different cube organizers in his room.  They were the black or ebony colored cubes and way too dark for the room.  I didn't want to get rid of them cause they can be quite expensive, so I opened a can of paint on their butts (a tribute to Roy D Mercer)!!!  One more lovely find were these paper holders.  I found 4 of them at Hobby Lobby on sale 50% off but they were all black again.  NOT ACCEPTABLE!  So I painted them the 4 accent colors and added some washi tape around the label plate to give it more interest.  Once I put all my paper in them I realized I had room and the need for two more.  So I went back and low and behold they were on sale again for 50% off!!!  SCORE!  Then there's the glass containers on the shelf.  The two stackable containers I found at Hobby Lobby on an 80% off clearance.  I had NO idea what I was going to do with them, but quickly realized that I could use them to divide up the container of decorative gems I had.  Surprisingly, I had just enough colors to fit in the 8 jars.  I found the center container at the next door neighbor's garage sale and one of the other containers at another garage sale.  I had the container holding the washi tape as well as the box and mason jars on the wall.  The middle jar in the box I found at the same garage sale as my trash can and paid less than $.10 for it.

Here's a close up of the paper boxes.  I used my silhouette to write out the labels on all the boxes.  My font of choice is Great Vibes.  I used that on all the vinyls in the room.

Since I had all these cube openings I needed something inexpensive to hold "Stuff".  If you've shopped for the canvas or basket style drawers you know they're at least $7.00 each and up to $20.00.  I have a LOT of openings and I had NO desire to pay that much.  So Eric and I checked out Dollar Tree to find baskets.  We bought 20 of them and when I brought them home they were too wide.  DANG!  So we headed to a different Dollar Tree and THANK THE LORD they had these and they had 20 of them!!!  They fit great...not perfect, but great...in there with a bit of room so they don't scrape the sides of the cube.  I used my label maker to label everything and organize it.  I actually have a little extra room!  What a wonderful "problem" to have!

Just a few more things left to show you.  This white basket I found at the same cheap garage sale.  I literally spent less than $.50 at that sale and walked away with 4 things that are in this room.  Right now it holds small card stock, but since it's so open it may have many uses over time.  The blue box is the scrapbooking box I've had for a very long time, and the iron just hasn't been put away since I used it this afternoon.  That leaves us with one of my favorite items in the room...

My Peg Board!!!

Eric and I picked up this large frame while out antique shopping.  I loved the frame but had no clue what I was going to use it for...that is till he told me I could have this room.  Immediately I knew I wanted it for a peg board.  I envisioned the spools of thread on dowels I'd glue in till Eric said just use the hooks made for a peg board.  I purchased a couple of packages of them just for this purpose, but we had a bunch of them in the garage as well.  We also had the holder for scissors and hooks for the rest of my sewing items.  It displays and holds all my sewing items so well and looks so organized and neat...I just LOVE IT!!!

I can't forget one last thing...the name.  I needed something to call my area and my mom was the one to come up with just the right combination...Jenny's Jems.  Here's the fun part JEM is my mom's initials!  Yes, I know it's spelled wrong, but it's PERFECT!!!

We're back to the beginning of the room.  So, what do you think?  It's my little haven!  I can put everything away and get it right back out again...ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Thanks for being patient with all my pictures.  Till next time...

 

Jennifer

 



Peanut Butter Bread and Caramel Sauce

I posted about Lisa's Peanut Butter Bread yesterday, and I was able to make it yesterday afternoon.  It was really good.  I need to make some adjustments on my end...piece of advice, don't use fresh ground peanut butter unless it has enough oil in it.  The one I had was very dry.  I tried adding some butter to add oil to it, but next time I will use natural peanut butter from Smuckers or some other trusted brand.  Anyway, I also made 1 1/2 recipes of Lisa's bread so that I could get a fairly good sized loaf out of my loaf pan.  Here's how it came out...

I think I added a bit more than 1 1/2 times the salt so it was a bit too salty, but that was my adjustment that I'll work on next time.  The bread has a wonderful consistency and I can't wait to toast it and make over easy eggs to go with it!!!

Next I made up more chocolate syrup.  I didn't picture that because I've already blogged how to do that here.  I needed some more caramel sauce as well so I whipped up a batch of that.

You all know how much I enjoy Maria Mind Body Health blog.  She has several different ways to make Caramel sauce.  I love caramel...pretty much anything...so this works for me!  I use xylitol as my sweetener so I had to use her xylitol version. 

I've made this before and had some issues with it.  She says to boil the xylitol, but it smokes way before it boils and begins to get a smoky, bitter flavor.  The point of boiling the xylitol is to get it to brown, but I noticed last time that once the butter was in the xylitol it began to get a darker color.  So this time I made a change. 

I melted the xylitol till it was completely clear (there will be "grains" of xylitol that will melt if you get it hot enough...it almost looks like bubbles).  I didn't let it get to the smoke point.  I added the butter, stirring the whole time, and cooked it till the butter browned.  It started to get a little smoky...not much, just a little...then I took it off the heat.  I waited just a couple of seconds then stirred quickly with a wooden spoon while drizzling in the cream. 

I stirred the mixture till the bubbles were gone.  I immediately poured the caramel sauce into a pint sized wide mouth mason jar.  I don't know if this is the right time or if I should have done it before, but I added 3 twists of Celtic Sea Salt salt grinder to make it a lightly salted caramel. 

It is MUCH better this time.  I couldn't even wait for it to cool completely.  I cut a couple of pieces of bread to try it out, toasted it up, buttered it and added a drizzle of caramel sauce.  YUMMMMMM!!!

Replacing all those things I love for something I love more...and yet still being able to enjoy a version of it...well I think that's priceless!!!  If I can do it then so can you!

Till next time,

Jennifer

Breads that are good for you!!!

I have had a very busy week.  I have a teen, a preteen and a daughter who thinks she's a preteen. They keep me hopping all around town.  For instance, today my teen is half a state away in a Jazz competition...so I'm busy praying he stays safe.  The other two have an early release day today so I have to leave in about an hour to get them both.  I want to bake or cook, or bake and cook, but we have been busy all week long.  Thank the Lord I had leftovers from our Super Bowl Sunday.  We've been fending all week on leftovers and quick items.  For me fending means a couple of eggs scrambled, some cheese and deli meats, a one minute muffin or a couple of pancakes made gluten free and low carb. 

Last night I had Bible study with a friend of mine, Lisa.  She is the author and contributor of the 24/7 Low Carb Diner blog and the cook books Low Carbing Among Friends.  She gives me so much useful information and I'm sure I just drive her crazy with all my questions.  I so appreciate her wisdom.  While we were discussing all my inquiries she mentioned that she had a peanut butter bread recipe that works very well for a bread replacement.  So last night I went searching on her blog and found the recipe.  Not only does it look easy, but there are a TON of testimonials on how good it is.  So today I am going to try this recipe...after I pick up the kids that is.



Lisa's Mr. Peanut Sandwich Bread courtesy of 24/7 Low Carb Diner

 But that's not the full purpose of this post.  Since I was already pinning I started searching for more bread replacement recipes.  See I love bread!  In case you didn't get the full impact of that statement I'm going to say it again...I LOVE BREAD!!!  I'm not kidding...I love it!  I love biscuits, sliced warm right out of the oven bread with lots of butter, toast, rolls, croissants, etc.  I love garlic French bread.  I love sour dough bread dipped in soup.  Do you get the picture?  Surprisingly I've been able to avoid bread without too much temptation, but if I'm going to do this life change I know I will need a bread replacement.  So therefore the search!!!  I found a bunch of replacement breads that I love and I'm going to share the links to several of them today so if you decide to make this change you can find them too.

Low Carb Gluten Free Pumpkin Bread
Zucchini Bread
Basic Quick Bread
Diner Style Coconut Pancakes
Coconut Flour Buns - for cheeseburgers
Mozzarella Cheese Biscuits (with a variation to make them like Red Lobsters...oh YEAH BABY!!!)
And many more...click here for my Changing my life - Breads board

This is possible!  We can do this!  With a few adjustments, some time and patience it is possible to make the changes necessary to be the best you (or me) ever!!! 

Want proof...this week I've purchased 3 sized smaller jeans, undies and bras...all out of necessity!!!  3 sizes...in about 5 months!!!  It can be done!

Till next time...

Jennifer