Dining Room Craft Area

I really enjoy crafting- I love to needle felt, sew, and scrapbook. My son enjoys drawing, my daughter loves to knit and put together puzzles. My children both put a lot of effort into school projects as well. The whole family loves playing games together. Most often these projects take place in the dining room. I thought I would show a few pictures of our dining room crafting areas and how we store our games.

Craft supplies can sometimes be difficult to get organized when you don't have a devoted craft room. To tackle the problem of having stacks of craft supply totes sitting in the corner of my dining room, I found this wonderful cupboard. This cupboard is nice and deep and my totes fit neatly inside. One of my best organizational tips is to buy matching totes- this way they stack better. For years I had so many different totes, they wouldn't stack well, and didn't look very nice- when I decided to narrow my totes down to a few styles that all worked well together, it made organizing much easier. The old totes went on to be re-purposed in many ways- so they were not wasted either.

Here is what the cupboard looks like inside. These totes are primarily for my felting supplies as well as some of my sewing supplies.


The biggest tote holds my basic wool, the smaller totes hold my dyed wool, as well as some of my doll making supplies and flower fairy flowers.

In the bottom drawers I keep my sewing needles, as well as small boxes and freezer bags holding individual projects- here is a small tote with all of my wool felt ball pieces already cut and ready to go. Keeping individual projects in progress in their own tote is a great way to keep track of all of the parts and patterns.


Right across from the dining room is our coat closet- along with coats it houses all of my scrapbooking supplies, stickers, and some of my special toy collections. My scrapbooking supplies are also available to my children for all of their school projects.

Again, for the most part I use similar shaped totes to keep everything easy to stack.




We keep most of our children and juvenile fiction in the dining room as well, in the bottom drawer we keep a nice selection of school supplies so they are easy to access during homework time.




Here is the school supply drawer- filled with colored pencils, pens, pencils, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, tape, and lots of index cards for taking notes and making flash cards. I still keep the tins of beeswax block crayons in here as well (my favorite) this way I am prepared when any little ones come to visit and want to color.





This is the hutch in the dining room- which holds more children's literature as well as all of our family games.




Here are our games neatly tucked away, ready to pull out for a family game night.





I just love to organize- this summer Gary and I were in a city about an hour from where we live with a lot of interesting stores- I stopped in at one of my favorite stores to browse- The Container Store. I only get here once a year or so ( I am not too fond of long car rides). So I had to takes some pictures.





I love the selection- we use all black hangers in our home- I love using all the same hangers- keeps some order amongst all the colors of clothing.





Here's where I found the perfect sized tote for one of my projects.




I loved all of these little colorful boxes- these could be good for so many different little things. Such a fun store!

As summer winds down, I always get the organizing bug, I love getting things ready for the new school year, and for fall. Last night, in the middle of the night, we had a wonderful late summer thunder and lightening storm. My lab pup Zoey was a bit anxious about it, so I stayed up with her, and watched the storm. Summer is winding down, and I am looking forward to the new school year on Monday. My prayers and thoughts are also with everyone in Hurricane Irene's path.

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. Proverbs 18:10 (NIV)