One of the things that i have been blogging about over at my mommy blog is the subject that the boys and i chose to focus on this summer: The Ocean. Seeing as how this has involved a lot of crafty type things, i have decided to continue the discussion over here and leave the mommy blog for things more along the diaper rash and guess what the boys did today line.

This blog was primairly started as a stitching blog and well not a lot of that is happening lately. I am getting about 2 hours of sleep and doing needlework is just not something i can sanely do. I do miss stitching and plan to try and incorporate some back into my life and schedule. For right now i find myself more involved with paper crafts and things along those lines. I love scrapbooking, card marking and whatnot and feel that since this was created as a crafty blog, i can share all of it here.

In studying the ocean with young kids, they really learn best visually so i took a portion of our dining room wall and covered it in marine blue and sand colored 12x12 scrapbook paper. It took about 27 sheets of blue and 14 sheets of the sand to cover a section of the wall. I used some of my Fiskars scissors to shape waves into the top layer of the marine blue and a rough scalloped Fiskar scissor for the sand. We have had several different projects involving painting fish and dolphins. We made jellyfish out of pipe cleaners today and i am really amazed at how much my 2 yr old is enjoying this and remembering the different animals we make. He loves to point them out to everyone when they come over.

Right now the only photos i have of the ocean are posted via my Blackberry onto my Facebook page, but i am working on loading my digital camera software onto my new laptop and hope to have some pictures up here soon. I also want to share the many cards that i have been working on as well as the teacher gifts i made for the end of kindergarten in June.

Today i hope to work on organizing my stickers and taking pictures of my new scrapbook organization, although i could probably do with 4 more cubes, i think my hubby would kill me as he is already less then pleased to see most of it out in the open. But hey it is organized and i think that is majorly important. I was always frustrated in making things as i could never find anything i needed and would just buy new stuff. That's great if you 1) have the money and 2) have the room, both i am short on, but i would do it anyways.

I have been ADDICTED to watching YouTube videos of people showing their scrapbooking rooms and have actually come across some people who also have some great tutorials for scrapbooking and card making and stamping, all of which i love and hope to share some of here as well. I am also going to be holding some drawings for free stuff as well. Time to get back into the crafty side of me because it really does make me happy!

Over the last few days i have been working on organizing the monster that has become my craft area. When i started crafting, i was really just into stitching and have tons of kits and patterns all ready to go for me to stitch. When i started having kids, i thought how great it would be for each one of them to have something hand stitched from mom. Yeah that would be great, now if i can only find it under all the mess! From the stitching it grew into beading and jewelry making and really that has been great. I never have to buy jewelry anymore unless it is something silver since i haven't ventured into the metal element yet. And of course being the paper loving person i am, naturally i had to get into scrapbooking and card making. It is scary just how much crap i have acquired over the years and just how messy the area is. I really need my own room, then i could close the door and hubby could not think about just how much crap i actually have.
When we moved into the house, i swore to hubby that i wouldn't let my crafts escape this huge TV amoire that we bought for them. Yeah here it is 4 years later and well, escaped isn't so much the right terms as exploded maybe since wow i have a lot of stuff and it is everywhere. I don't even have a half of the things i need for stamping and whatnot, i just kinda make do.
Target in our area has been clearancing out their Itso cubicle boxes that come with shelves or doors or fabric bins, similar to the Cubix, but they are 14x14 so much bigger and able to accomadate the 12x12 pads and whatnot for scrapbooking. So i banked on these and bought everyone that the store had to offer, which was around 8. I bought 4 doors and all the shelves that they had which wasn't a whole lot, 6 i think. I have cubix fabric boxes at home from other stuff so i planned on using those in helping organize the area. I like too that those are smaller and so i can put other things in the cubes as well.
So i am working hard at getting organized finally, but really all it is doing is pointing out the things i NEED to buy in order to complete something on my enormous list of things to do.