Declutter, Recycle, Reuse

This week I jumped in feet first to my goal of getting the kitchen cleaned up and decluttered this week!  I work on it in the morning in 15 min intervals (along with all the fun stuff like laundry, catching up on blogs, emails, etc)  Today was my large spice cupboard and a couple of drawers.  It is amazing what finds its way to the back...some of it I opened and had no idea what it was (tasting is not often a great idea...I found the alum!)  It is such a great feeling to start out the new year with a clean kitchen and everything in place.  Mind you decluttering can create a lot of new clutter as bags find their way to the door to be donated or to the top of the basement steps to find a new home on food storage shelves.  It will be done by Saturday.  Then I move in to the living room.  Fortunately my family is understanding my need to reduce the visual overload.  On really good days I sit back  and things are looking rather bare! lol  Now to find the balance between overload and empty house!!

I have dedicated my afternoons to creating...something! anything!  and having fun!  My 3 words for 2013 are Live, Play, Learn.  The past few days I have landed on the couch curled up under my blanket.  On the first day I had to remind myself that "curled up on couch" was not "living" so I pulled out a Dresden Plate Pillow kit that I won before Christmas.  It arrived just in time for Santa to take it for my stocking (budget cuts) to keep me focused on my daughter's birthday and Christmas.  I decided that I could curl up on the couch and sew the project by hand.  I haven't done that in ages...sew by hand (not counting binding)...I forgot how much I love sewing by hand.

My husband hooked up some sort of external port thingy to the old tower so I could post pictures...YAY!  I can't seem to edit them so you will have to take them as is...bad lighting and all.

The fabric is from a line called Flea Market Fancy.  I love this fabric and don't have any so was super excited to win a kit with it.

Today, I was going to start appliqueing it on to the background fabric but then started looking at the tv tray.  I was going to toss it at the end of the week.  It is old and covered with marker and paint stains and glitter glue from the girls early crafting days.  It is a bit of an eye sore.  Then I went downstairs and tripped over my ironing board and bumped into my cutting table while walking around the ironing board...this equals stress for me.  I then realized that my nasty tv tray was the perfect size for the spot next to my sewing table AND it would give me more space to walk around the cutting table without tripping over the ironing board.  I went online and found that many other people had similar thoughts so I picked a tutorial and ran with it.  I pulled out some Robert Kaufman fabric that I love and backed it with some heavier twill fabric.  In less than an hour I had a new mini ironing board perfect for my sewing room.

I love the fabric.  Perfect for a blustery, cold, wet day like today!  So bright and cheerful!  The flowers match my sewing room wall.

I love that when I am not using it, I can fold it up and set it out of the way.

It is now not an eyesore when I am working in the living room!

One thing that I am going to do is glue gun some twill tape around the underside to keep anything from catching on a staple and to prevent the fabric from fraying.