I've been spending a lot of time this summer up at the cottage we built almost 5 years ago. Fortunately for me, our dear friends from Florida bought a place up there last year and so they have made the transition of going to our "dream place" by myself a little bit easier. While I was there the last time, I snapped some photos of the area I like to call the "crafting room/lounge."
(
I took these photos with my phone, so please excuse their grainy quality.) Pictured above is my old desk with all it's cubbies we brought up from my craft room here. The printer sits on a vintage red kitchen cart with an old screen door behind it which doubles as a magnetic display board.
Many of the items in the room have been collected over the years. My daughter's old bedroom used to be decorated in a red and white
Mary Engelbreit theme. When she got married I couldn't bare to part with any of it, so I boxed most of it up and put it in storage thinking I would use it if we ever built that "dream house" we talked about for so many years. Vintage Pyrex, red document boxes from
HomeGoods, vintage game boxes, red gingham jelly jars, soup cans and
Midwest Imports red and white cherry pottery pieces which I bought at the store where I used to work are all used to hold and store various art supplies.
I found these old galvanized cubbies at the flea market and filled them with tiny treasures.
My DH found this counter-high work table (
something I've always wanted) which was being discarded at work. We hauled it up to the cottage in pieces and reassembled it inside the room because there was no way we could have lugged this heavy table up the stairs in once piece. The stool is from
World Market.
By the way, the white trunk under the window used to be my daughter's toy box to which I added ball feet and red-checked upholstery to the lid. The cork board above the desk used to hang in her room too. I bought a plane wood framed cork board from
Target and painted it black with red cherries on it to go with her
Mary Englebreit themed room. The school letter "A" hanging on the cork board is from my high school pom-pon uniform (
rah-rah!) and the tassel next to it is from my DH's high school graduation.
Even the old TV pictured below is from my daughter's old bedroom! She and her hubby used it in their house when they first got married, but then returned it to us when they bought a new one. It sits on another vintage cart - this one rusty and old with a porcelain top. The triangular stool on casters is from an old family friend's house which he used to roll around on in his crawl space. The bamboo director's chair I got at
HomeGoods this summer and topped it off with a red and blue vintage hankie.
All the red-checked bedding is from my daughter's old bedroom. The decorative pillows and quilt are from
IKEA. The wicker table was a treasured gift from my husband very early in our relationship. The floor lamp used to be in our family room when we first moved into our house 31 years ago. (
I hang on to everything!) Raggedy Ann and her baby Ann are my daughter's dolls.
The white octagonal table was my grandma's. It used to be in her back bedroom and I can remember playing on it when I was a little girl. I was able to bring up a lot of my
Rowe Pottery crocks and lamps to use in this room. An old iron bed piece serves as a quilt rack next to a treasured Grandma Moses print which used to hang in my family room. Her art has always been an inspiration to me - perhaps it's because we share the same birthday!
I hope you've enjoyed this tour of my cottage crafting room. It makes me so happy to be in this room because everything in it holds so many fond memories.
Jennifer O'Brien made one to adorn her front door.
