Inspiration: 5 Home Office Spaces You'll Actually Want to Spend Time In

My Christmas break is officially over. It's back to the grind (aka school) for the final semester of my three-year break from adulting and the beginning of what I hope to be a long and exciting career path in Interior Decorating and Kitchen Design!

To ease the transition of having had three glorious weeks worth of lounging around and doing nadda, into what will likely be a hit-the-ground-running type of January, I'm in need of inspiration to get my work space looking like a place I want to spend some serious hours in. I had a great setup in our last house, with a fun little live mood board, but this time around I'm hoping for something a little less fussy and time-consuming that I can easily pull together.

Storage and shelving are always a must (gotta have space for my chachkies and books), I have my rattan chair that I still love and want to keep, plus my faithful Besta Burs Ikea (best investment) and just some pretty things to stare at while I think about all the things I would rather be doing than sitting at a desk struggling to finish a project at 3:32 am.

Alright. Enough slacking, time to get to work...and by 'get to work' I really just mean stare at pretty pictures of home offices I found on the internet...

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one room challenge: week 3 accessories

YIKES. Week 3 already??

If you've been following along on my six week adventure to redecorate my new bedroom, you may have noticed that I haven't done much! My excuse: Finishing up the last week of my Interior Decorating diploma at Georgian College. I also had the opportunity to volunteer at Georgian's first-ever Research, Innovation and Scholarship Day, where our program took home a well-deserved prize for "Most Creative". Here we are manning the booth and showing off the DIY lamps we had created for our lighting class. Pretty creative, right?

This week I am also preparing for Georgian College's School of Design and Visual Arts Scholarship Show, where the top students from each department display their favourite projects from the past year for prospective students to view. There is also a judging component to the show, where over $30,000 will be awarded to students from the Art and Design Fundamentals, Fine Arts, Jewellery and Metals, Digital Photography and Imaging, Interior Design, Interior Decorating and Web Animation and Design programs. I participated in the show last year as well, and this year's board will likely look pretty similar to what I had shown:

As wonderful as it feels to be done, it is also a little daunting to now be focusing all of my attention to the One Room Challenge, as there is SO much to do. This week I managed to spend a small fortune at one of my favourite stores: Homesense. And of course I strayed a little from my original plan...but after a little space planning, I decided to nix this gorgeous rug I had initially had my eye on, in favour of some drapes that will be a much softer addition (and a little kinder to my budget). There's a beautiful sage-green that runs throughout the pattern and I plan to play it up with the bedding accent pillows. As disappointing as it is to let go of the rug, I was fearful that such a strong colour on the floor will make the already small space feel even smaller. I may regret this decision, but for now I'm loving the drapes and very excited to see them in the space! The pic below was taken at night with my phone, so it really doesn't do the fabric justice. But you'll get the gist of where I'm going with this :)

I also picked up a few little cheapies at my guilty pleasure, WalMart: Furniture paint from Peony & Plum in Warm Black as well as a pot of white, custom matched to Benjamin Moore's Moonlight White (more on this next week) and my dad and I are prepping for the trim work this afternoon (better late then never, right?). No doubt the last few weeks will be a whirlwind, but luckily I work best under a little extra pressure!

If you're new to the blog, you may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about....well, a few weeks ago I signed up for the One Room Challenge, a blogging event hosted by the lovely Linda of Calling It Home. She's challenged 20 featured designers and a over 200 Guest Participants to link up and share the adventures (and misadventures) of decorating a room in six (very short) weeks.

back to school desk refresh

After such a busy summer it feels good to finally have some free time to putter around the basement and get my space ready for school. I spent a massive chunk of time commuting to downtown Toronto on the GO Train, but it forced me to slow down and think about what is important to me, why I am back in school and what I want my career to look like. With the help of two amazing podcasts (After the Jump and The Lively Show) I’ve settled on a list of goals that I would like to achieve. Some are short-term goals that I can chip away at over the next few months, and some are more long-term that involve a little more time and patience to achieve.

One short-term goal was to get my desk in shape and “blog-worthy” for the first day of school. Not only is it finished, but I managed to make a gif—something else I’ve wanted to take a stab at. It definitely isn’t perfect, but it is close enough and was surprisingly easy to create (this blog explains it all)

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Last year I had a less then great experience with Rust-Oleum’s Chalkboard Paint and Magnetic Primer (purchased from Home Depot for $10 - $20 each). After four coats of Magnetic Primer, it still didn’t hold much more than a sheet of paper. The Chalkboard Paint was fine, but even after washing with water, there was always a cloudy film left on the wall. This year I decided to create a “Living Mood Board” by nailing an assortment of bulldog clips and magnets onto the wall. This way I can pin an assortment of fabric samples, paint chips, floor plans and more onto the space without requiring of a million magnets. A few favourite images and postcards are still hung using magnets, but the clips do a much better job at keeping things in place.

The rest of the space still needs some work, but am hoping to save those projects for the One Room Challenge, a bi-annual linking event hosted by Calling It Home (you can read all about it here)…another goal to hopefully cross off the list! For now, I feel ready for the new semester and putting this space to good use.