» office

Map it Out

Brittney — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:32:37 +0000

I was on another kick to find a way to add some fun, inexpensive art to our new home. My brother dutifully delivered an Iowa road map to me on his vacation to visit us.

I simply rolled it out, used the mat as a guide and cut it out. Wha-lah!

In only 10 minutes I had a easy DIY piece of art with extra sentimental value for us. All together now, awww.

Eventually, we’ll be adding it to a collage of photos and artwork on the other side of the room.

Floating Space

Brittney — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:26:46 +0000

In the theme of getting the office put together we tackled another project this week. Installing floating shelves. I’ve had my eye on a pair from IKEA. The $20 Lack Shelves. I must be a trend setter because those babies were sold out everywhere. I even called the warehouse and they tried to ship me some from Virginia and unfortunately, no dice. I did find some look alikes at Amazon and put my order in.

Our little office space looked like this (great chair huh?).

The shelves were pretty easy to install. The shelves came in two pieces. One piece was a metal bracket that was installed on the wall.

The second piece, the actual shelf, just slid right over the bracket. Easy! So now we have some handy shelf space to keep the desk clutter at a minimum and some interest on the wall to keep Matt from going crazy looking at the white expanse of wall.

After hanging the first shelf we realized that the second one wasn’t necessary in the office. We’ve been trying out different places all over to find it a home. I think we’ve found a winner so we’ll post on that later.

Have you found any look alikes that fit the bill for one of your projects?

Video Vamp

Brittney — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:30:44 +0000

Matt had class all weekend so I was left to my own devices. Of course, when we finally got our backordered office chair while he was away my first thought was “I should totally make a video of me putting this together.” Boredom and isolation will do that to a girl. But my shame is your gain. Behold, me, building a chair with only an Allen Wrench and a stick figure diagram.

For all of you I’m-at-the-office-so-I-can’t-watch-videos this is what happened. The office looked like this.

I magically put together this fancy pants chair from Tar-jay, and now it looks like this.

That’s it in a nutshell, minus the circus music. You’re welcome.

Organizing

Brittney — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:19:33 +0000

Remember how I received the bestgiftever this Christmas? The labeler? Besides labeling the dog kennels, I’ve really put this baby to work. As you know, we got our new fandangled desk recently. We had to move all of our files and electronics stuff to our new desk. What better reason to de-crapify and streamline our files. The latest issue of Real Simple made my heart flutter with all of their office organization tips. I whipped out our trusty P-Touch with clear labeling and went to work.

I first emptied the drawers of our old cabinet. It was ugly. Almost as ugly as the pantry…I went to Office Max in search of the perfect hanging file folders. The standard issue green wasn’t doing it for me. I found these pretty blue ones with coordinating files. Behold.

I labeled all of the files accordingly and sorted all of the junk. It is fabulous. My favorite part? Everything is easy to find! I love how the electronic cords are all wrapped and labeled. No more fishing around for the camera cord.

What have you organized? Any tips we should know?

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New Desk

Brittney — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:37:35 +0000

I have been after the Pottery Barn Bedford Desk since I was like 10. Well, maybe not that long but I had my eye on it forever. Its perfect-functional, not too gender specific and there are so many options. I was in love. But not with the price. Enter JCPenny Home Store to the rescue. They have a fantastic alternative. With our Christmas money burning a hole in our pocket, we took the leap and ordered the desk. I LOVE it! It’s hard not to love it based on what we started with.

A countertop anchored to the wall. It worked, sort of.

The night we brought it home I had to open it and set it up right away. Unfortunately, in my ~~laziness~~ excitement to paint our office the last time I didn’t paint behind the old countertop. We were dealing with a 6 inch strip of wall in blue. A minor detour.

Well, it’s all painted and in it’s place. The storage in this is amazing. I’ll be on the hunt for cute accessories to cute it up.

Can you tell I love it? So hold on to your hats folks, here’s how much we saved going with our inexpensive JCP version:

Pottery Barn Bedford:

Desktop, 2 drawer file cabinet, 3 drawer file cabinet: $649.00

JCPenny Version:

Desktop, 2 drawer file cabinet, 3 drawer file cabinet: $298.94

Total saved: $350.06-and that’s how it’s done my friends.

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