Think Spring!: Bulletin Board

Back in September, Nathan and I went to Nebraska City for Applejack, and one of our stops was a flea market where I picked up a frame that I planned to use for jewelry. Then I realized that I missed having something on my desk for photos, etc. so I decided to make it into a bulletin board for that.

As you can see, it needed a fresh coat of paint.

After the paint, which was silver, I cut the corkboard to fit inside the frame and hot glued it to the inside. It wasn't especially sturdy, so I then cut a piece of cardboard to fit and hot glued it to the back of the corkboard.

Here it is finished, though it still needs some momentos on it.

Think Spring!: Desk Storage

Now where were we? When we last left off in the story of the desk update, it had gotten a pretty new coat of stain. But there were some other updates that have been going on, including new fabric-covered boxes.

 

I am somewhat of a box hoarder, and with all of Nathan's Newegg shopping, we have a lot hanging around. I took three of them that were about the size I wanted and found some fabric to cover them with. A lot of the tutorials I found via Pinterest involved a sewing machine, and I was, well, kind of lazy. So instead I turned to my spray glue.

 

Here's Shelby checking out my materials, which include: two kind of fabric (I used a solid pink and a striped pink and green, and the amounts you will need will vary based on the size of your boxes. But you will need more of the one that you'll actually be covering the boxes with.), spray glue, ribbons, fleece, and scissors.

 

 

Step 1: Measure the box all the way around, then cut your fabric to fit.

 

Step 2: Spray the back of the box with the spray glue (probably outside) and then apply the fabric to the box. Continue until the entire box is covered. It doesn't have to look perfect.

Step 3: After I had finished, I realized that I wanted some fabric on the bottom so my desk wouldn't get scratched. So I got some white fleece and cut it to fit the bottom of the box and used the spray glue. As you can see, the white fleece wasn't cut perfectly, so I trimmed off the extra.

 

Step 4: I took the second fabric and cut it to fit the width of each individual side of the box and about half the height of the box. Then I used the spray glue to attach each panel over the top of the box so it was even on the outside with the other panels surrounding it.

 

Step 5: After everything was attached, I didn't love the way it looked when it was left unfinished, so I added a ribbon yesterday. I think it looks much more finished now.

 

 

There was another upgrade to the desk, and that is my jar of shards that I finally cleaned and put in a jar after almost a year. And, the bulletin board is also a new addition--check back tomorrow for a tutorial on that.

Think Spring!: My Desk Makeover

It was more than two years ago that Nathan and I (or just Nathan) took on my desk project. To refresh your memory, here it what it looked like when we finished.

 

 

And that above is what it has looked like for the past two years. (Except for the fact that I got some marker stain on it. And there's a ton of stuff in all of the shelves.) It wasn't that I didn't want to stain it, but more that I couldn't commit to what color exactly I wanted it.

 

But that decision was finally made (officially) back in September. Nathan got me a new chair as a surprise that matched the dark wood of these framed prints that I got for my birthday also a couple of years ago.

 

 

    

 

We had a very scientific way of finding stain. Because the frames matched the chair pretty well, we decided to take one off the wall and with us to the hardware store. We picked out stain and brought it home, but as I was applying it, it wasn't quite the color it needed to be. Luckily we still had some stain leftover from when I finished our Ikea nightstands. It ended up being the perfect match for the chair and the frames.

 

It seemed like it took forever for it to finally be finished and ready to put back inside. There were many coats of stain and poly. But it turned out just right and it looks much better than it did before. I'm really glad that we took the time to build something that works just right. Here's what it looks like today. Literally. I just took this picture.

 





Thrifting: My Treasures

I consider myself to be a pretty organized person, and I seem to function a heck of a lot better when everything is organized and doesn't feel chaotic. However, with my new job, I get a TON of paper handouts (and email, for that matter) that seems important and I always reference, but I just don't have a way of organizing it without going too far over line and OVER organizing it (which, in my opinion, is almost even harder to deal with than not being organized). I mean, look at this mess:

THIS is why the dish drainer solution appealed to me as much as it did. And after searching (it seems like a lot of searching, but really, it wasn't that bad), I found this really cool-looking yellow dish drainer, for only $3.50. And that includes the cool mat thing that came with it! You know, if I was using this as an acutal dish drainer.

But before I could fill up my pretty new treasure, I needed to go through and file everything and THEN label my folders. It turns out I had a lot of folders already in place, but they were so overwhelming to use because I had to open each one to see what was in there. So I got out my trusted label maker and got to work, reworking folders and relabeling folders and all around having a good time. Here's my before picture (and yes, that's facebook in the background. I love distractions.):

Now, I know what many of you are thinking, and that's "Well, you know how they make these things called filing cabinets? You could maybe invest in one..." Let me tell you--we DO have a filing cabinet, but it's all the way down in the basement. And I love this solution because these are files I use on a daily basis, and while opening a drawer every time I need something might help me build some arm muscle (a girl can dream!) this solution gives me easy access to everything I need. And I mean, come on, how cute does this look?

I have to say, I didn't love the yellow color at first. I thought about spray painting it pink, until I realized that if I ever decided to use it for actual dishes (novel idea, right?) the spray paint + something you eat off of would probably = a no no. And then I overanalyzed even further: This room will become a nursery when we way down the road have kids, and when it does, I will have more yellow incorporated (yes, of course I've thought about how cute a nursery inspired by my childhood blanket my mom made me would be!) and as it turns out, dish drainers are also great for storing puzzles! So, that is how I eventually accepted the school bus yellow color.

Now, I said I went out with two missions: the dish drainer and a utensil tray. As it turns out, people who have super cute utensil holders don't give them away. Only people who have not-as-attractive plasticy ones (like us) donate them when they've outgrown their usefulness. So I had to find another solution for the keys, because Nathan was really desperate for one. And I didn't find anything I liked at the thrift stores, so I bought this cool white square bowl thing at Target for .  . . $3.50! That's right, the same price as my organizer, but new. It matches our dishes, and I think it looks pretty nice on the table here.

But I have one other thrift store find, and it's my favorite. A friend gave me a book by Sophie Uliano, and I found her health- oriented book there for $2. For a hardcover! Too fun. I can't wait to read through it and see what I can do to "live lean and green."

Now tell me: what's your favorite thrift store/garage sale/antique store find? Or even etsy find!

DIY: My New Desk

So, I've already teased you with this link showing you the plan for my new desk. Well, not the exact plan, but that's the point of this post. I'll show you how we adjusted the initial plan to better suit my needs and show off some pictures of the work in progress and the finished product. Here we go!

I started looking for a new desk when I got my new job. I was going to be working at home, and I felt I needed something more functional than what I had if I'd be spending so much time working at it. I had a desk in my room with my computer and piles of stuff to be filed, stuff to be put away, stuff to be shredded, stuff to be tossed . . . you get the idea. In the basement, I had a craft table set up, with stuff I'd bought for my etsy store, stuff leftover for the wedding, works in progress, and supplies. Basically, I had two desks full of stuff and no space to work. So I started searching for something that had lots of storage and a huge area for me to work. I found a plan that used a door as the top and then found a door on craigslist. Alas, the man wouldn't let me get the doors the next day—he wanted them gone ASAP and couldn't guarantee me a door. So, I finally convince Nathan we/he could build my craft table.

The only problem was that my room is not quite big enough for what the plan originally called for. It's a small, cozy room, with a daybed and a rocking chair, and I didn't want to sacrifice either of those. So we cut the depth down, and to keep the space, we also made it longer. It was also too high for me, so we made it shorter. And because of these measurments and the fact that I wanted to store my sewing machine on a shelf, we decided to only have one shelf on the sides. Let's just say we spent almost the same amount of time figuring out the math for the new plan as we did building it. But we got it (almost) perfect in the end.

We checked with Nathan's dad to see if he had any scrap wood he could cut for us, but while he was waiting for said scrap wood to dry out enough, Nathan's mom found a sale on plywood at a local hardware store. They were able to pick that up for us and cut it according to our measurements, which was very helpful. And then, on my birthday, the wood was delivered and ready for us to put together.

The first thing we (I mean, Nathan. Let's face it—I helped but he did the hard work!) did was build the big side box. We had to hold everything up so that we could visualize where it went, and then Nathan put everything together. We only had a few missteps along the way, mostly in shelf placement, but it only took about an hour and a half.

We thought the second one would be even easier because we'd already done it once. WRONG. We started with the wrong boards three times before we figured it out. Turns out we need to visualize and then build, even if it's just repeating a process we've just done; we don't learn from experience. Once both sides were done, we carried them upstairs and put the top on in the actual room. We'd discovered earlier on that the only mistake we made measurement-wise was that the front side pieces were taller than the top, meaning that we needed to add a quarter-inch board to the back to level it. Luckily, I remembered that we had one in the shed that the previous owners had left behind, and Nathan used the snowblower to get back there so we could finish the desk. 

And there you have it! Now for a tour of the desk. Shelby does like to sit on the rug while I'm in there working (or Facebooking, as the case may be). On the left shelves, I have all of my etsy stuff: paper, fabric, ribbon, notebooks, and everything I have in my inventory. The front shelves in the left hold my craft supplies: glue, glue gun, tape, markers. The right side has all of my personal projects and supplies: paper for my scrapbook, work stuff, a plastic bin of things I need to scrapbook. And the front shelves hold office supplies (staper), my books (dictionary and style guides), journals, and supplies for the printer. It's really nice to have everything organized in a way that makes sense with my mind, even though it doesn't look especially neat (which is why you don't get pictures of the finished space!). But what's important is that it's functional. And don't worry: we plan on painting the whole thing white when it gets warmer out, though I can see a benefit of leaving it as is: If I get paint or glue or whatever on it, it doesn't really matter.