Friday, December 9, 2011

Office tour finished

Today I will finish up the tour of my office makeover. I finally got my window treatment up. The curtains had been out on the back porch for the summer but now with winter coming (woke up to snow on the ground this morning) I washed them up and hung them in the office.

I had been reluctant to hang them earlier because one of our dogs ate my last curtains I had up but our dear Abby passed away several weeks ago so they are safe now.

Here are a couple shots of the tight corner of the room. The closet and the bookcase I mentioned yesterday.

I took the doors off of the closet to make the area more accessible. Since I had lots of quilts to display there the doors were not needed.

Here is the bookcase at the end of the bed.

With the bookcases split apart I get balance and function in the room and I love all the dark wood against the blue/green of the walls and the white accents.

The finishing touch was to replace the generic 30 year old light fixture cover. I had a white wire basket that I added blue/green glass discs to along with Mardi Gras beads and glass necklace crystals. I attached the basket to the ceiling with cup hooks. It was so easy to create, it just took time and patience.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed the tour of my office space. It is tiny but really functional.

Have a great day and remember to be grateful today for something unexpected. Try to see the good in adversity and the good in others around you.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

More office makeover

Well, I left off yesterday after showing you the wall treatment I did in my office and what the room looked like as you look in from the hallway. Today I will share with you some of the details of the room.

Let's start off with a look at my desk area. Here is a photo of the desk. Of course you realise it doesn't look that neat right now as I am sitting here creating this post.

My desk is made up of an old treadle sewing machine base that I topped off with a mahogany top that my DH made for me. This top has been used for so many purposes. I have used it on 2 short wrought iron bases for a coffee table, on this same sewing machine base as a sofa table, and against the wall as a console table. Now it is serving duty as my desk top in my office. I love the rich wood tones and it is 5 feet long so it makes an ample surface to spread out and do lots of paperwork. I have room for my laptop, the phone, a wire basket (not in the photo) that I can keep all my frequently used books and folders in. As I look at my desk right now I need to do some editing of items so that I can get back to just the important things. Prime real estate here, I have stuff that can go else where in the room and declutter my work surface a bit.

I used the short wrought iron stands underneath my desk on the ends to place my printer, printer paper on the bottom shelf of one and books and other frequently used items on the other one. I have a ton of Longaberger baskets and so I took the set of hexagon shaped baskets and hung them on the wall and placed pictures of the grandbabies in them. As the pictures are just sitting in the baskets they can easily be replaced with newer photos as they grow and change. I could also put small items in the baskets in front of the photos if I had some, such as a rattle, a baby bootie, or a little hair clip.

On either side of the desk I placed small bookcases that I got at an auction this past summer to store more booksoffice supplies etc. The bookcase is in 3 sections, the end pieces are on either side of the desk and the main section is at the foot of the bed creating a day bed effect. It is hard to get a photo of it as it is a tight fit between the bed and the closet but I will try to get a good photo and post that tomorrow.

As you can see the room has shaped up ralther well and I will finish the tour of it tomorrow. Hopefully you will get some ideas of things that would work for you in your home. My personal favorite that I have shared with your so far are the baskets masquerading as picture frames.

I hope you have enjoyed my office tour, remember to do something unexpected for someone else today and find one thing to be grateful for.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

More office photos

I promised some more photos and explaination of my office makeover. I don't have a before photo to share. I always seem to jump into a project and forget to take the before photos. I will have to work on getting before photos of projects in the new year. So here is a photo of the wall treatment. It is not wallpaper, it is hand painted treatment to resemble wallpaper.

I painted the wall first with Martha Stewart Living paint color Hummingbird blue in eggshell. I next made a cardboard stencil shape that I could trace around. It needs to be symmetrical if you want the motifs to snug up against each other. I traced around the template shape with a regular pencil, moved the stencil and continued tracing. It is important to have a vertical and horizontal line to start out with but after you get the first row of stencil drawn out if you stay consistent with how far apart you place your stencil it will stay straight. It is also easy to fudge a little if need be. After marking the stencil design on the wall, you need to take a 1/2" artists brush, I used an angled one, and paint on the inside of each motif. This gives you the double nestled up lines. If you painted in between the 2 penciled lines you would have a single motif and it would be less busy. I won't lie to you the rest of the marking and painting step takes some time. It took me one day to do one wall. As I only did 3 walls it took me 3 days to do the decorative part of the painting.
The color of paint I used to paint the stencil design was also from Martha Stewarts paint line in Sea Glass and I used a semi-gloss for that so that the light would reflect off it and show up a little more. I love the effect that I got but if you didn't want quite so much pattern you could use lower contrast colors and stay with the eggshell finish for the paint. I painted the ceiling and trim Glass of Milk, so it is a creamy white.

Here is a photo of the room pulled together from the doorway.

Notice the sepia photos of my girls on either side of the windows. It is a beautiful way to add symmetry to that wall and I get to see those beatiful faces everytime I enter my office.

I will add more photos and explanations tomorrow on the rest of the room. The functional part of the space.

Thanks for reading and hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget to be thankful for something today and find some way to do something nice for someone else.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Comfy spot to read or meditate

I made some pillows with some rather large vintage linen napkins that I found. I had a set of 5 that matched and 3 more of another style but the same size. I hand dyed the 5 a nice golden yellow, which is the accent color of my home office. I made 2 completely yellow and 1 that is yellow and natural linen and 1 completely natural. I made them to create a day bed look in my office. I bought Euro sham pillow inserts that were 27" square, zippers and some vintage crotched tims, which also got a dip in the dye bath. I also picked up a battenberg lace Eurosham cover on one of my trips to the antique mall. Here is what my day bed looks like with the pillows.
Here is a little closer detail of some of the pillows.
I took them to the craft sale to see if they would sell even though I was hoping that they wouldn't. People didn't even really look at them. Well it is my gain. I love them and am very happy that I get to keep them for my room.

I am looking for some sort of storage containers, whether they be wicker baskets or something else for under the bed and then I need to find a skirt or something to cover the bed base. It is not all that attractive. I love my day bed though and now I am going to keep it a "dog free zone". NO dirty paws are going to get up there and ruin it.

My office is coming together nicely and it is a pleasure to spend time here on my computer or reading. It is a peaceful sanctuary.

I hope you have enjoyed a peak at my office. I will post more pictures of the rest and tell you how I did it in another post.

Have a great day and remember to be thankful for what you have and do something kind for someone else.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Craft sale update and plans for the day

Monday morning. What is today going to hold? I am going to run an errand for Jeff, seems he bought some Christmas decorations from a lady in Mercer so I am going to pick them up. How strange. He buys a lot of stuff online but Christmas decorations would not have been something that I would have expected. While I am out I will run into town and pick up some groceries. Need to make a big batch of soup for Prime Timers for tomorrow. Will also bake up a big batch of cookies to take for the cookie exchange.

The craft sale at the church on Saturday was a big success. Most of the people I talked to did well selling their crafts and the UMW group did very well at their table and the kitche sold out of just about everything. I heard many of the shoppers coming in saying they had a hard time finding a parking place. I was a very good day indeed. I have Chrismas presents to make replace since I sold some at the craft sale, but that was my intention.

I heard from Kate last night. She is getting moved into her place rather nicely. She got all her electronics hooked up all by herself. That is a great accomplishment that I wouldn't try to tackle on my own. It seems that there are more wires and connections to make than there are pieces of equipment. Good job Kate.

Yesterday, Jeff went and got our rugs out of storage so that we could get them back down (since Abby isn't with us anymore, the rugs are safe again) before I put up the Christmas decorations. I wanted to get them started yesterday but it didn't happen with all the furniture moving that was done to get the rugs down. It will get done this week.

This week I also want to start quilting on ceiling panels for my studio. Since we had to remove the dry wall ceiling due to an electrical problem I have had bed sheets tacked up to cover the dark light absorbing ceiling beams. I have had this in mind for years now and I am finally going to get started. It will give me lots of practice and be a great way to show customers quilting motifs and ideas to use on their quilts when they drop them off.