please stop all bids on this because i would like to have it but i know it will quickly be out of my price range.

ok, thanks.

when i last posted a picture of the office, it looked like this:

lately, it's actually been more like this:


rug covered in cat/dog hair while the vacuum cleaner is in the room so there are no excuses as to why it's not more fur free? check.

overflow books stacked in the window that you can clearly see from the outside, making us look oh so classy? check.

not one, but two unplugged lamps, one of which is broken? check.

bookshelf sitting 1' off of the wall because there are no baseboards along that wall and we don't want to put the bookshelf in place in fear that we'll cover the bookshelf with stuff and therefore never finish the baseboards? check. (trust me on this one, it's on the wall you can't see. and yes, it's been that way since last april).

towel covering part of the window to help block the light/cold air? normally check, but i was doing some laundry and decided to wash the towel. but it was dark blue, imagine it shoved behind those lovely books.

you might remember that last spring we installed crown molding in this room, and replaced portions of the baseboard and shoe molding. we were having trouble matching stain/finishes between the old and new woodwork and we got frustrated and gave up... for 9 months. a few weeks ago we decided that maybe the stain was not as far off as we first thought. we decided to go ahead and install everything and live with it and see how much it bothers us. i have a feeling that it will bother us a lot less attached to the wall than it did sitting in the basement :-)

after finishing up with the baseboards on saturday, we were motivated to keep working on this room. so we hung up the ikea curtains that had been in our dining room and removed the old broken roller blinds.



we even hung up a picture:


and unpacked a few more boxes!


organizing the shelf is a work in progress, i have a lot of oversized architecture books that will eventually be on this shelf. we also have some other things we want to hang on the wall, and we still need to get a new overhead light and roller blinds for the windows. but this room actually feels done now, and that is a great feeling.

by the way, we tried to rearrange this room before putting it all back together and couldn't come up with anything better. it's a decent sized room, but both the desk and the shelf are 5' long and with the 3 doors (exterior, room, and closet), radiator, and window... this seems to be the best solution. when we first bought the house we thought that this room would be our guest room, but i couldn't even imagine trying to figure out how to fit a bed in here!

notice anything different?



i finally got a stendig calendar! i've wanted one for years but always seem to miss them (they seem to sell out quick). plus mike thought my need for this giant calendar was weird.

but this year... this year i tricked him. cause i asked santa for the calendar.





now that we have the calendar, i really need to edit what is on those open shelves. there is a lot going on on this wall. i think i'm going to take off at least 1/2 of those cookbooks, and find a different place to store the wine. besides, now the wine is blocking the wall toaster. and you all know how i feel about our wall toaster...

oh, and how does mike feel about the calendar now? well, his biggest issue was that we couldn't really write on it and he wanted a functional calendar (every other month has a black background with white letters) so i compromised.



and how did santa wrap such a giant calendar? like a candy cane!



thanks santa :-)

the curtains i ordered from west elm arrived earlier this week - that was fast shipping! i couldn't wait to hang them up and mike wanted to try out his new cordless drill (christmas present from his parents) so last night we got to work.

remember the old curtains?



the biggest reasons why i wanted to replace these curtains was the size and the weight. even though they aren't technically sheer curtains, they are very thin and didn't do much when closed. the dining room window faces the street so i'll take any extra privacy that i can get. they are also just too short for this window. we had to install the curtain rod along the top of the window frame in order to have the curtains go to the floor and it's always bugged me.

the new gray curtains are 10" longer and it makes a big difference. they are made of a heavy linen so they have a nice texture and weight to them and, when closed, do a better job of blocking the light/view. the grommets make them much easier to open and close. i'm tempted to go ahead and take down the pink mini-blinds now! (i still want to get a white roller blind from ikea so that we can leave the curtains open for more light, but still have some privacy from the street).







i know, it's hard to see with the pink mini blinds... maybe i should just take them down now and use only the curtains for awhile. also, i don't know what's up with the picture quality, i took these quickly this morning and they look really fuzzy. i'll try to take a few better pictures over the weekend.

anyone going to ikea anytime soon and want to pick up a roller blind for me? i'd like the one below please:

it also comes in dark gray, but i think i'm going to go with the white this time :-)

a few keyword searches that have led someone to the blog:

"make it look like christmas outside my apartment" - my advice - have you heard of christmas lights?

"fun fabric ceiling lights" - i get fun fabric, i get ceiling lights... but fun fabric ceiling lights? what does that even mean?

"how to put wood panneling in an apartment" - you don't. you just don't.

and my favorite... "trevi dining room set what to paint walls" - awww, someone named a dining set after our cat! i say paint the walls gray and white. it's a good color combo for a trevi.