House Tour: Office and Guest Room
I like to think that we’re a pretty tidy family.
When I take most of the photos for these house tour posts, I straighten a few pillows, pick up a couple of toys and generally things are ready to photograph.
My office? Um, not so much.
I pretty much filled up the hallway outside my office with the baby bouncer, sound machine, piles of picture books, the nursing pillow, half a dozen baby blankets, a couple of books, five unhung photos, bits of past projects, a box of thank-you cards, and a baby monitor to make it suitable for photographs.
Obviously, my office is a highly-used room.
Not only do I work in here, I use the guest bed to nurse a lot and the girls love to read books on it with me in the afternoons.
It’s also ridiculously enormous and because we don’t have gobs of furniture in it, I kind of spread out all over the floor for various projects and photo shoots.
It has beautiful lighting and I love that it looks over the driveway so that I know when the mail woman comes (for some reason, getting the mail is pretty much the highlight of my day). Also, when our girls slept over the garage in our last house, it always woke Ella up if Bart or I left or came home when they were asleep. Now? No one to wake up!
I’ll miss this office a lot. A lot, a lot.
I’ve felt like my desk was too small for several years, but I couldn’t justify buying a new one when mine was perfectly good.
But then when we came back to North Carolina, we opted to leave Bart’s desk at the old house because it was so enormous, we weren’t sure we could get it down the stairs and into the moving truck on our own (when we bought it nearly two years ago, we paid the guy who was there hooking up our Internet to help Bart carry it up the stairs. It weighed so much, I couldn’t even lift one end.
So I foisted my desk off on Bart and bought myself a new, much bigger one.
My mom bought this set of Louisa May Alcott Books when I was young and I lost one of the books at violin camp or something. The incomplete set sat on our mantle in our first house and my sweet father-in-law noticed that one was missing when they came to visit, and tracked down a copy and mailed it to me.
How could you ever complain about in-laws like that (you can’t. I hit the in-law jackpot).
I printed out these free calendars from Delineate Your Dwelling and taped them up on the wall between the two windows. I had some tiny gold hearts from Cricut (I think they were part of a swag bag from Alt Summit) and I glued them on to each of our birthdates.
Our birthdays are beautifully spaced (February, May, July, September, and December), so I’m not sure how we can have a fourth child.
My other most precious set of books. My mom checked each of them out from the library in Wisconsin to read to me and then, when the library was selling them off for a quarter apiece after they replaced their set, my mom bought them all.
Sources:
Desk: IKEA
Desk chair: Goodwill
Computer: c/o Sprout by HP
Storage Basket: c/o Schoolhouse Electric
Milk Bottle Vase: Michaels
Mug: c/o Lulu & Georgia
Be Present Print: c/o Schoolhouse Electric
Bulletin Board: Ollie’s
Bed: Craigslist
Comforter: Target
Green blanket: IKEA
Pillow Shams: Made by my mom
Metallic Pillows: Wayfair
Telephone Table: c/o Schoolhouse Electric
Plant: IKEA
Plant holder: c/o Schoolhouse Electric
Lamp: IKEA
Calendar prints: Free printables from Delineate Your Dwelling
Green tape: Frog Tape
Gold Heart Stickers: Cricut
Shelves: IKEA
Bird: Honeycomb Studio
Portrait: by Merrick
Spice Jars: IKEA
Rocking Chair: c/o Lulu & Georgia
Pillow: c/o Lulu & Georgia
Awww. The Little House books are some of my favorites, too. I have an incomplete set of Louisa May Alcott books as well… my grandmother was a bookbinder and collected the old books as the library would update their inventory. It's still one of my treasured possessions to this day.
Where do you keep your printer? I am trying to make more space on my desk, but I have to have a printer somewhere.
Such a cute room! I love your style. I'm still trying to figure mine out. What are your cleaning secrets? I have to spend an hour midday and an hour in the evening to even maintain our house. I try to keep it 15 minutes from company but it's a battle. I'd love to hear your cleaning secrets!
Thank you for linking back to my blog for the Calendar Prints because then I found you! Great space, love how clean and comfortable it is.
I love all the white and green in your office! It's my favorite color combo!
I've loved following your blog over the past year. I wanted to mention that the book in your basket, "The Water and the Wild," was written by a former English major classmate of mine from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. I have my copy pre-ordered, and I hope you enjoy reading it! Your reviews are typically spot on in my opinion!
I'm so jealous of your birthdays! 🙂 We have two in November, one in December, and a new baby coming either in September or October.
Lovely office.
You can shoot for an end of March/beginning of April baby or end of October/beginning of November. It wouldn't space out so beautifully on the calendar, but you would have an adequate amount of time between. (All of this because of course you can choose your babies birthdays)
Where do you keep your printer? I see all these cute home office makeovers, and seldom does anyone have a printer anywhere I can see. Do people not need or use printers anymore? I am trying to clear more space on my desk, but I need a printer somewhere.
Also, and this is an honest question, why not just reply to comments in the comment section by hitting the reply button? Please forgive me my ignorance on both these matters. 🙂
In my previous office, I kept my printer on a shelf above my desk, but right now, it's just on the floor – I don't use it all that often and my girls can reach it to get paper out of it instead of me having to get it for them, so. . . it works. Not the best solution and if we were here long term, I'd probably get a small bookshelf or table for it to go on.
Also, I generally reply by email if people have their email set up because it's more likely that they'll see it (I don't know how often people go look back at the comments after the fact).