Craft Room and Office Make Over
Hello friends,
When we first moved into our home when we came back into Dunedin in 2019, we chose a house that would fit both hubby and my work spaces, since we have the privilege to work from home. I chose my craft room space in what was a big bedroom that had a mezzanine attached. The decor in the room was typical for the 1990s, with lots of beige and brown, and also with a feature wall. I was just happy to have a dedicated crafting space at the time, and I knew I could decorate later it to my tastes.
The plan was to use the mezzanine space as storage for all my craft supplies, but as soon as we moved in our cat Missy (black cat) chose the mezzanine as her own personal sleeping space. And then when Rosie (tuxedo cat) joined us as a kitten later on, she also fell in love with the mezzanine, now all decked out with soft toys and cat beds.
This set up has worked for a number of years, there's space for sewing, spinning, and weaving, and chilling out and crafting at night while hubby plays on his Playstation in the lounge. The kitties have also enjoyed the space they've also claimed as their own.
I had my office down stairs in a room shared with hubby's home office, and it was dark and dreary, with no sunshine at all during the day, and south west facing. The other problem is that it was so far away from my craft room that my workflow was very disjointed. I had started thinking about moving my office upstairs into the craft room at the end of 2023, and then over the summer holidays, hubby came to me pondering the idea of having his own space for building and storing his Lego.
The problem with Missy and Rosie cat is that they love eating things, and especially Lego, so the Lego space couldn't be somewhere that the cats could get to, which meant it would have to be in hubby's work office. But hubby's work office already had his piano in there, which meant we would have to move it elsewhere. We soon came up with a plan to move the piano into the office I was in, and then I would move my office into the craft room, which I was very happy with.
The other problem was that my craft room had a big couch in there, as well as a large loom I used for work, which meant that my desk wouldn't fit in the space. So after some brain storming, we came up with solution. The first task was to sell the couch, which was relatively easy to do within a couple of days on Trade Me. And then we also put my big loom up on Trade Me as well to sell. I'd wanted to downgrade my loom to a smaller sized Ashford 8 shaft jack floor loom for a while, and this was a perfect opportunity to do so.
With the couch gone, and the loom being readied for selling, there was finally space to move my office desk up to the craft room. But, that's when I come up with another idea—since there was room in the craft room to move around, it was a perfect time to paint it. I couldn't stand the brown walls anymore, and within a couple of hours of suggesting it to hubby, we'd already bought the paint, Quarter Alabaster from Resene (I chose this colour as I often need neutral backgrounds for product photos for my business), and started prepping the room for painting. Missy cat loves climbing ladders so she was very helpful during this stage.
Because we had to keep pushing stuff around the room to make space, we ended up painting one wall at a time over a couple of weekends, but we finally got it done.
With all the painting done, we moved everything back into position. But we had another hurdle to overcome, we had taken down the blinds during the painting, and now needed to replace them with thermal curtains. After a quick trip to Spotlight, I returned home with the most girly of curtain fabrics, and with my mum's help, we made the two sets of curtains needed for the craft room. The big south facing triangle window was a challenge, but luckily we'd done it before in our bedroom at the other end of the house, and still had the template to cut the curtain to the correct angle.
Within minutes of getting the finished curtains up on the windows, hubby and I excitedly began moving my office. It didn't take long at all to move my desk and all my other stuff up the stairs. And while I was pottering around and putting my desk stuff back into it's rightful place, hubby was already moving his piano into his home office space...
The room is looking better by the day as I potter around making it the space I've always dreamed of, and since then I've sold my big loom. I then ordered my new loom from Ashford, and it arrived within only a couple of days, and is now assembled ready for weaving. The display cabinet I blogged about last week, is in it's final position, and now has a cat bed on top. Rosie and Missy are now arguing who gets to sit in it each day.
I also ordered an occasional chair to replace the big couch I used to do crafting on, but it isn't due to arrive for another month. Once that is here, my craft room makeover is complete. It was a longer process than it initially started out as being, but I'm really happy now with this space. It makes me happy to go to work and to craft, and it is a really relaxing place, with great views, and plenty of natural light.
And if you're wondering how hubby's Lego project is going, well it turns out that he didn't check the size of the piano vs the chicane the piano would have to go around in order to get into his home office, and the piano didn't fit, no matter what we tried. We ended up moving the piano into the lounge, and then rearranging the couches after that, and then moving our treadmill into his home office to make enough space. But what is done is done, and he's now happily unboxing all his Lego in half of his work office, and organizing it to his heart's content.
The one thing that we did take away from all this, is that our 1980s home looks better when it's been repainted to a more neutral light colour. Most of our home is currently in shades of brown and maroon, with many feature walls, and it feels dark and gloomy inside. We are already planning on painting more rooms this year, but are currently taking a break until autumn. During this renovation my garden has been neglected alot, and needs lots of love between now and the colder months.
Have a wonderful day.
Julie-Ann
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Dehydrating All The Herbs
Hello friends,
It's finally the time of the year when the dehydrator is working full time, and there's currently a bunch of herbs drying in the dehydrator.
First up is coriander, which is currently on it's second harvest for the season.
Next we have dill, which has also been harvested for the second time this season.
I've also just harvested celery for cutting for the first time this season, and I'm hoping to turn it into celery salt.
And also, there's finally enough basil to start dehydrating. I've just did the first harvest, and there was enough for both making a small amount of pesto, and also for some to dry.
And finally, I've just harvested lemon balm for the first time ever. It's used a lot in the teas I often drink, so I'm hoping to make some for myself.
Have you got harvests coming on? I love early summer in the garden, it's full of so much potential.
Have a wonderful day.
Julie-Ann
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Winter Citrus Garden Project Part 1
Hello friends,
I'm in the middle of working on my Winter Citrus Garden Project, so that I can put my lemon, lime and mandarin plants into the ground this coming spring. They are too big for their pots, and need their own space to expand into in the garden. Of course this means that from next autumn and winter I will need to protect them from frosts and snow while living outside, but I've figured that this a problem for future me to sort out...
For the past couple of months I've been planning, and then preparing three areas of the garden for the citrus plants will move into. My citrus plants currently spend spring, summer, and the first part of autumn sitting on the patio, which pretty much gets all day sun. I love the way the plants look in our brick patio, especially when they're in flower and fruiting, it makes the area feel very Mediterranean, so I decided that the plants had to go into the ground near this space.
The mandarin tree is quite wide, so it will be going into the position previously held by the rhododendron bush behind the fence as shown in this photo.
So far over the winter, hubby and I have chopped down the rhododendron behind the fence, and more recently I've water blasted the fence for painting. I don't particularly like rhododendron plants, the main reason being that rhododendron nectar is actually poisonous to Tui, and can kill them, which is why I didn't mind getting rid of it. My plan here is to paint the fence white, not only will the fence and mandarin provide a pop of colour in the garden, but it will also make the fence easier to see in the dark while driving down the driveway...
The next area to prepare, is for the lemon tree. As seen in this photo, the lemon tree is small and round, and it will be moving sideways as seen in this photo, into the herb garden bed under our kitchen window.
Last week I tidied up the herb garden for the winter, and left the thyme and rosemary plants to stay where they currently are (after giving them a big hair cut). The lemon tree will sit in the middle of the herb garden as seen in the photo below, and the mint and saffron plants will sit on the right.
The last area to prepare is for our lime bush. It is much more bushy and bigger than the lemon bush, and it will be going into the spot where the small Japanese maple tree used to be.
We really loved the Japanese maple tree, that you can see in the photo above, but the previous owners put the tree in a bad spot in the patio. The base of its trunk was right up against the brick wall for the driveway, and as it got bigger, its roots and trunk started damaging both the fence and the patio. Half the tree also stuck out into the driveway, making driving out of the garage tricky at times.
Over the last couple of weeks we chopped the Japanese maple tree down, and then spent a lot of time digging up as much of the roots as possible, in order to ensure there would be space to put the lime bush into. This part of the project actually took way more work than I first envisioned, so I feel like I'm somewhat behind in the project at this stage.
The next step in this winter citrus gardening project is to paint both the fence, and also the board holding back the soil where the lime tree will go. And given that it's winter in Dunedin, and it's rare that the temperature will be above 10˚C long enough for paint to dry and cure, this step will only happen on a sunny day with a warm north westerly wind, no doubt. This may take weeks to happen, so in the mean time I'll continue to work on other garden projects.
What winter gardening projects are you up to? I'd be interested to find out.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.
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