Took a break for Mid-winter Break

Hi everyone!  As you can see I took a break for mid-winter break with my kids.  We had so much fun this week hanging out, making homemade pizza for my hubby's birthday, playing video games, cleaning up the garden beds for spring, playing at the park and in general enjoying eachother's company.  My daughter and I were also able to do martial arts classes together this past week - one of our favorite things to do together!  It was a very busy but relaxing week of fun for us all but now they are back at school (boo-hoo - those who know my family know I LOVE vacation time with my kiddos and am always sad to send them back to school).

I've also been doing a bit of picking up, organizing and re-arranging in my craft room.  It was a complete and total disaster.  So much so that I earned the "pick up your room" doorhanger from my kids!  I made this one during a class well over a year ago and I hang it on the messiest bedroom as a gentle tongue-in-cheek reminder that its time to pick up.  Daughter is usually very tidy in her room and most of the time winds up helping her brothers pick up theirs (yep, you read that right - she actually HELPS them pick up their rooms - man, I love that kid!).

One of the BIG things on my to-do list has been to organize all my embellishments.  Wow, you can REALLY stock up on a whole lot of embellishments in a couple of years!  I've been thinking that a COLOR system would be much better for the way I craft so I spent several evenings sorting ALL of my bits and bobs into several clear shoe-box bins.  I now have a bin for:
Whites, Pinks, Reds, Blues, Greens, Yellow/Orange, Purple, Brown/Black, Sparkles and Pearls and Metallics along with bins for adhesives, small alterables and tools.  What a difference this is going to make for me!  I always think of my cardstocks by color names but when it comes to embellishing I often just know I want a purple something here or a pink ribbon there.  Here is a quick picture of what my bins look like now.

I'd love to hear stories of how YOU organize your crafting stuff!  Do you have one big bin?  Storage drawers? Do you go by color?  Brand?  Leave a comment and share with me what you do to control your crafting chaos - I still need lots of help!  Seriously - the "clean your room" is STILL on my door!