office reveal part 2

hi & welcome back to my new office. woohoo! on monday i showed you the first half of my office reveal, which was the built-in ikea hack bookcases and our work table.

the other side of the room, which i'm showing you today, is my desk area!

the desk corner looked like this when construction was first complete:

it now looks like this:

you may notice that this means our office is a secondary passageway from the entry to the kitchen. theoretically, i'm held accountable to keeping it tidy, because it's so visible from so many rooms on the main floor, doesn't have doors to close, and is pretty much the first room guests see when they arrive.

the magazine files are from ikea. a 5 pack is only about $2 so they were a great way to get a ton of storage for cheap. to label them, i used an old-school dymo from urban girl office. (by the way, i am 99% sure my friend kyla, from house of hipsters, coined the phrase bloggety blog). 

i made the bulletin board myself, by stretching duck cloth over a framed corkboard and adding brass nailheads. we originally talked about building a large one into the wall, but space constraints and commitment-phobia changed that plan.

the phrase "special delivery for laura" was on a package from my insta-girl sarah, from chalk full of love, that arrived this week. sidenote, i'd like sarah to address all packages sent to me from now on.

of course the bulletin board wouldn't be complete without my hello notecard from yes ma'am paper goods.

i wrote the "Jesus do what you want to" print after hearing those lyrics in church one morning. what a perfect prayer, right!?

the "be a voice" print was a freebie from kyla's blog that i printed about 2.1 seconds after seeing it. she's also responsible for the anna rifle bond thank you note that i used as the unofficial inspiration for the color scheme in my bookcase styling. so she's basically bombing this bloggety blog post all over the place.

kaitlin parisho designs did the no diggity print. i do tend to love rap lyrics written in gold embossed calligraphy, don't you?

my little gallery wall has a "love you" freebie printable that i made, a prada marfa photograph by andrea ament, a knock off of the "i blog because i'm not a good rapper" print by skoope home (it was sold out so i had to make my own, far inferior version, using this method), and the cutest little pug dog by ryan kapp (which i have named gooby, after my brother's dog. don't tell dyson, but he's like my favorite dog on the planet).

the flowers are totally fake. i don't want them to be- i even planned to get real ones for this shoot. but instead i'm keeping it real. by showing you my flowers are fake.

more kyla-bombing here with the freebie candle labels she made to save ugly candles everywhere. it's getting embarrassing. i must have been at the height of my house of hipsters girl crush when i decorated this office. :) she's even the one who told me about urban girl office, where i ended up getting like half my office supplies. yep, i'm a stalker. please let this be a post she doesn't read.

and that's where i work you guys! well, i actually still usually work on the couch or at the kitchen table next to some taquitos. but this is where i organize all my work stuff, do projects, pile plans, and stash my computer when i'm not writing.

in the end, i think i incorporated most of the major things i loved from my inspiration spaces and my office wishlist, and the result is an inspiring and functional room. it's so crazy different from the little school room it used to be! i also have to laugh at how pretty and put-together it is compared to the chaos happening on the other side of the bookcases! oh well, this house is one step at a time.

in case you missed it, check out part one of the reveal right here.

thanks for taking this (way overly-long) tour with me!

office reveal part 1

i feel like this is a little anti-climactic, because it's so long overdue, and because i've been showing it to you in bits and pieces (like here and here and here) for the last 5 months.

we finished construction on my office in july and i set out to filling it with pretty stuff right away. it didn't come together immediately, but it was definitely functioning within a month or so. aaaand since then i've been procrastinating on getting pictures of it and posting a proper "reveal" here on the blog.

i had these grandiose visions of ellen, my sweet and wonderful friend & photographer, coming to take "real" pictures of it, which i would then submit to the every girl, who would of course swoon over it and publish it on their site immediately. heh. i got busy, and ellen got busy having beautiful babies, and we never even made it to phase one of my master plan.

well, as part of my thanksgiving weekend to-do list, i finally took the time to get some pictures (iphone attempts are better than no attempts i've decided) and to put away all the crafty junk piles i have been amassing in the meantime. and now i'll be one room closer to that "house tour" tab all bloggers are supposed to have on their sites!

so here's the reveal!! (well, the first half anyway)!

starting here, you've just come in the front door of my house, and you're standing in my entryway. you'll turn to your right, look through the newly narrowed (and trimmed!) doorway, and you'll see this:

just to refresh your memory, here is what the view looked like through that door when we first began this project:

and now here's the photo explosion of "after" pictures:

i shopped my basement, primarily, to fill the tops of the built-in bookcases. i had all this pretty stuff down there and family heirlooms that was just collecting dust, and it's so nice to be able to display it. i don't have very many shelves or surfaces in the rest of the house, so this is really the only place i've got this kind of display happening. i love that it's so personal.

ryan and i found this rock at pebble beach when we lived in california. i have several vintage books from my parents' collection.

i DIY'd a few baskets with a bright woven pattern to provide hidden storage (they're mostly hiding craft supplies like yarn and fabric paint) and the "easy as pie" appetizer plate from target is a new addition. at $1.99 how could i pass it up?! (looks like it's in stores only).

i have my grandma's bible on the shelves, and i found my grandparent's wedding announcement in the basement. the dollar store had a gold frame that was just right.

this is one of my favorite pairings on the shelves. the vintage video camera is from a garage sale and it's sitting next to a picture of the iphone (the hand and the phone belong to kyla, my house of hipsters blog buddy, which i had to photograph in front of a pink brick wall on our renegade outing. i mean, come on, how perfect is that picture?) anyway, just looking at these two together sure makes you think about how fast things change.

everyone should have a well-worn copy of c.s. lewis' mere christianity. what a read.

moving around the room...

i placed a work table in front of the bookcases. it is from target, but we got it almost ten years ago. i've intentionally kept the walls on this side of the room white and blank, as they are the backdrop for photographing blog projects. i like to think of it as my mini studio. i also turned it into a portrait studio the other day to take pictures of the kids, and it worked perfectly!

the top of it has been destroyed by years of kids and abuse, which is wonderful, because i don't have to worry at all if my hot glue gun goes a little bonkers during crafting sessions.

so that's my bookcase styling and work table/ studio space. it's been so wonderfully functional. after all the months of having the house torn up and our stuff displaced, i've just loved using this room and having it work so well.

i'm going to pause here because this post is never going to load with all the pictures, and thursday i'll show you my desk area on the other side of the room. we've waited five months, so what's a couple more days right?

see you thursday. i can't wait!

{update: lucky you! it's like you dvr'd this post and you can fast forward three days to part 2 right here!}