Hello???? Is anybody out there?

 Wow, long time huh?  Well it's been a crazy year, most of it spent putting my house back together. Why you might ask... Our house flooded the beginning of May - if you look closely you will see a couple inches of water in my scrapbook room.  There was standing water in every room of the house. :(  Thankfully we had our RV which we parked in our driveway and where we spent much of the summer.

Due to the amount of water the folks who were drying the house out wanted to do a "pack-out".  Now we had something similar happen 20 years ago but we had to take care of sorting and getting rid so stuff ourselves.  No big deal...it was a lot of work but everything stayed with us and we knew what was what.  Well a pack-out is a whole other ball of whacks. These people come in and put everything in boxes - sort out what's wet and everything else is taken away to be stored in a secure facility until a future date.  Well it took them DAYS to get it all packed up...they were amazed at how organized and how much stuff I had packed into that room (the bedroom was also packed out). 

So, while the house was empty we painted every room, had the house re-plumbed and all new flooring. Then our boxes were returned 2 months later in mid-July...almost 300 boxes + lots of "extras" that didn't fit into boxes plus the furniture.  Our 1 1/2 car garage was completely filled back to front, floor to ceiling.  It was a nightmare...there wasn't even a path.  Bedroom stuff was mixed in with scrapbook room stuff so every box was a surprise and not in a good way.  

I decided this was the perfect opportunity to de-stash, organize and pretty much redo everything.  As you can tell by the photo above my room was pretty crowded but I knew where it all was. I started off by getting 3 Ikea Kallax 5 square x 5 square shelving units - 1 for my bedroom and 2 for the craft room. I can't tell you how much I love them.. They are WONDERFUL!!  They hold so much and look so neat and tidy.  I have acquired several other fun storage pieces which I'll tell you more about later.

So, mid-July till now!!! Yes, I am just getting everything finished up. It has been such a long tiring 6 months. Let me tell you - NEVER let anyone box your stuff up. There were boxes that had items from several different areas of my room all thrown together, There was stuff that had been neatly organized in a multi-drawer organize...these drawers were dumped into a box so nothing "accidentally" fell out of the drawers when they were moved!!!  Those boxes alone took several weeks to sort and put back into a semblance of order. Anyway, I haven't crafted anything for over 9 months which is why I haven't posted on my blog or even been on FB much.  In that time our washer sprung a leak, our stove died and our 2 year old fridge quit working as well.  Basically we've got a new house.  I am praying and knocking on wood that we won't have to do anything to the house for a good long time.

Since I'm not quite finished with my scrapbook room I will post photos and more info on my new organizers later...so very excited to share. i'm thrilled with my new room.

If you're still reading, I'm also excited to say I'm back on the Lost Cost Designs/Carmen's Veranda design team. I like to have a purpose to create and this is the perfect kick in the butt I needed to get back into action.  My first creation will be shared tomorrow right here on the blog and on FB.

So, more  coming...I hope you come back and see what's up.