Christmas Present For Ourselves

I feel like I start every post lately with how busy I am, but sadly, it's still true. This is the time of year where my job takes over and I've been working 12-14 hour days over the past few weeks. Last year I was able to prepare, by starting my holiday projects earlier, but with the charity event I worked on taking place the first weekend of December, I had no choice but to jump into work mode as soon as the event ended.

Oh well, Christmas happens every year, and there will always be time to get to the projects I didn't have time for this year. Not going crazy and taking on more than you can handle is important for your sanity sometimes.

So instead of spending time crafting and scrambling to make last minute Christmas gifts this past weekend, we did something for ourselves. We took a drive down to Charlotte and bought the very important first piece toward finally fixing up our family room, a new couch.

 Karlstad, by IKEA, in lindo beige

Home Office: The Progress

Well, now that you've seen my ghetto-rigged guest bed headboard, and I've appropriately downgraded your expectations of my decorating skills, let's have a look at the progress I've made the past two weeks in the home office/guest room.

If you remember, this was the before, right after we moved in:

And here is what the room is looking like today, from almost the same angle:

Ahhh, it's so bright and cheery now! I love how much natural light this room gets in the mornings, even though it's in our basement, and the lights I bought really keep it cozy after the sun is no longer streaming in through the windows.

But before I get all giddy about my progress, lets take a closer look at some of the details.

First, the bed, which you got to see a bit of in my last headboard-making post. The sage green sheets are ones we got for our wedding, the dust ruffle is from the set that matches our master bedroom comforter (to cover the fact that the box spring is currently on the floor) and the green comforter is my husband's from college. That we were still using on our bed until last summer when my aunt and uncle thankfully upgraded us to a nicer, not 10 years old comforter set.

I mentioned them before, but for now I'm just using two small bookshelves to act as bedside tables, and I put a lamp (that used to be on my desk when I worked in an office) on a file cabinet that matches the bookcases, so the lamp wouldn't be too high in comparison to the rest of the items on that wall. Everything seen here is stuff I already had around the house, and I just broke open one of our many, many boxes of books to fill in the bookshelves a bit.

Sooner or later I would love to hang a picture above the bed, but I'm concerned that anything I have is going to look too small on the 20 foot wall that the head of the bed is on. So that would mean buying a few more wall hangings, which I don't really want to spend money on right now. I guess we'll just see if it happens or not, meaning, how long can I go before the bare walls drive me batty!

Next, the crowning glory, where I spend between 8 and 10 hours each day, my desk. Or desks, since it's actually three desks that I've put together to make one looooong creative space that runs well over half the length of the room!

When planning out my office space, I really wanted something that would be modular. Considering we're only living here for a year, and I have no idea what my next home office may look like, flexibility was key. So now with a corner desk and two smaller straight desks, in the future I could create a large 'L' shaped desk, or even break them up onto different walls, or even different rooms if I wanted.

But for now, I'm loving the feeling of endless space along my wall with windows:

At the right end of my desk I've finally got a place for my sewing machine to be set up, along with my beloved cutting mat. I'm using green boxes from IKEA that are meant to hold DVDs to hold my thread, scissors, bobbins and other sewing supplies.

In the center desk area there is a set of deep drawers to keep my work stuff in, and I've got a big open space for...whatever I want. The extra space is glorious, I tell ya! Considering I spent the 15 months crafting my heart out for our wedding working mainly on just our coffee table, all of this work space is like heaven to me.

And while we're on the subject of the center desk area, I'll show you an up close shot of my pretty new lights, and how I turn all three of them on with the flip of a switch--a switch on a power strip, that is.

Turning on my overhead recessed lights and all three of these desk lamps was getting to be too much trouble. Not to mention that I had to crawl on my desk chair to even reach the floor lamp in the corner behind my desk. So my easy-peasy solution was to plug them all into a power strip with an on/off switch. Now I have easy access plugs available for my glue gun or whatever powered crafting tool I might be using, and I don't have to awkwardly crawl on a chair to turn on my lights.

Since we're talking lighting, here are some gratuitous shots of my lovely new lights. I love the combo of bright lighting they give off, and the pretty patterns they splash on the walls in the evenings.

So now, my actual work area. Where I actually get paid to sit five days a week.

And not only do I have a window to look out when I need a break, but I am absolutely loving my corner desk. I've never owned a corner desk before, and had no idea what I was missing. But it's the perfect size for easy access to my 15 inch work laptop, 23 inch external monitor and my 17 inch personal laptop. I hardly have to move at all to go between answering work emails to checking my personal email!

Another feature of my new desk set up that I'm enjoying is that my printer is right next to me. I used to have to walk half way across the building at work to pick up my print jobs, so this is a nice change. And the shelving unit that it is sitting on now holds all of my crafting supplies, like paper, ribbon, glue, and a million other things. +1 for finally being organized!

From the far corner (where the old straight backed chair that was my temporary desk chair is now living), you can see the other window in my room. I've put an old bookcase under it, because the cats love to sit up there and look out the window. And next to it is a plastic stacker that holds a ton more crafting supplies.

So that's about it! For the moment anyway. This room has certainly come a long way in just a couple weeks, but I still have some plans for it, like figuring out some kind of window covering that won't get in the way of my desk area. And then there's the whole "what to put on these ginormous walls" situation, which I'm still unsure of. Plus I've still got a few more sage green decorations to add to the desks.

Thankfully, I've got time to play around with these ideas!

For now, I'll leave you with another photo of my new desk, with the lamps off, so you can better see how all the rattan and green accents tie together.

 

I think I'll do a budget breakdown next, in case anyone is curious what all this new furniture and stuff cost me. I'm actually a little curious to find out myself!

So what do you think of my progress so far? And what are your must-have office supplies, because I feel like I'm missing something.