Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Every month a group of six bloggers share their workspaces, homes, towns, and more!

This month’s theme is: Crafting slash DIY. Don’t expect to see anything pretty here. That’s what the other ladies are here for 🙂

I’ve always considered myself a crafter and DIY-er. But the only place that is really true is in my mind.

I THINK about creating things. I read about it, buy books with many wonderful ideas, peruse websites, tear pictures out of magazines.

And The Best Part: I buy the materials. Paints, brushes, glues, clay, beads, tiny ladybugs, vintage buttons, shadow-boxes, rubber stamps, ribbon (OH, THE RIBBON). All of it. I love The Materials.

But when I get them home I love them so much I’m afraid of ruining them by cutting or gluing or melting or whatever the appropriate activity might be. So it goes on a pile..and then into a drawer or cubby…and eventually into a box for moving (cuz THAT I do a lot).

Does anyone else remember Ben Franklin Craft stores?? That’s how old those little grasshoppers are! And the plastic bag is full of old buttons.

I’m SURE I’m not alone in this. Come on, fess up.

I had to really really think to come up with some things I actually HAVE made over the years and the only two I can come up with are beaded bracelets and when Katie was little I would paint her t-shirts and sneakers, and THOSE were adorable, if I do say so myself.

An issue for me with crafting is…what do you do with all these things after you make them? I painted a couple little birdhouses (oh, and I made some clay Christmas tree ornaments by cutting them out of shaped cookie cutters). But once I had several sitting around looking cute, what was I going to do with MORE? I was really not proficient enough that anyone would have paid actual money for them. So I stopped painting birdhouses.

I did, also, have a brief handmade paper stint, and that was kind of fun, but…now, close to 20 years later, I still have those dozen or so sheets of handmade paper in a box somewhere. And I don’t want to ruin THEM by doing anything with them.

I decorated cakes for a bit…is that crafting or baking? I’m not a good baker. I needed some way to try and salvage meh cakes.

There was a sewing phase, like home-dec sewing, not clothing. NOT clothing. Clothing requires far too much precision for me. I am NOT a precise or careful person. I am willy-nilly and sloppy. But I did make several sets of window valances and cushions. Actually, for some of the window valances I used sew-on hem tape, I didn’t even sew them.

Sewing machines hate me. I avoid them at all costs.

Oh, flowers! Not sure if that qualifies as craft or DIY but I did flower arrangements and wedding flowers for a yearish, turning it into a business pretty quickly, but…when we moved out of The Great Big House into The Cute Little House, it got harder to run a floral business and I just stopped.

Making beaded bracelets is the most recent activity. I like them because a) I don’t need any sort of particular ability to bead beads onto a stretchy thing, and b) I can WEAR them. They’re not just another thing taking up space.

So, while I love the concept of crafting and DIY, it is just not really my thing. I’ll stick to the camera and computer, things that can be precise on their own. I just have to tell them what to do.

Be sure to visit my friends’ blogs and see if they are more creative and skilled than I (Spoiler Alert: they are!)

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After 
Em at Dust and Doghair