This post was inspired by the incredible office spaces at WeWork (a co-working company).

Back at the very end of December, I mentioned that I was going to start working on my creative space. This is the room where I’m supposed to be able to go to play with my hot glue gun and experiment with gold foil but since I couldn’t even get in the room, I usually ended up doing this kind of stuff on the dining room table. Does anyone know how frustrating it is to try to work with twine when you have two cats? Or how annoying it is to have spent hours on a sample of hand-stamped, heat-embossed wedding invitations only to have your dog steal them off the table and eat them? Spoiler alert: it sucks. So instead of letting my room continue to look like this (eeeeek sorry, mom!):

I finally got my butt in gear and did something about it. Now I have a space that looks like this:

Less like this.

More like this.

I love it. Sometimes I go stand in there just to be there. Not only is it clean but there’s actually a place to put things away! Cleaning no longer means moving things from one pile to the other and I cannot believe it took two years for me to get this done. The baskets are ones we already owned from World Market and the paper trays are from Target.

I will say it’s not 100% finished. I still need to frame out the white board and the rug, desk chair, and slipper chair are temporary until I can find something that I like better for the space. I also need to add another lamp or two and get blinds and curtains but I actually don’t mind the naked window.

My favorite part is how cozy the room is. I can work at my desk and then curl up under a blanket on my chair and just relax. Sometimes I need a break from whatever it is I’m working on and lounging on a comfy chair by the window sounds just about perfect to me. The cats are big fans, too.

This is my absolute favorite piece of furniture in our entire house. We both love vinyl and own 4 record players. We picked up this fully functioning stereo cabinet at our local ReStore for $80.00. It has a few bumps and bruises but I love it just the way it is.

I have something going in the big gap in the middle of the wedding photos but it requires custom framing that I haven’t had done yet! I also need to print a couple of photos to go in the bottom two frames.

The yellow cabinet used to be our bathroom vanity in the powder room but I’ve re-purposed it here to store my cameras, laminator, and printer paper. It has two holes in the top from the plumbing but they’re pretty much covered by my mammoth printer. I also removed the poorly frosted glass and replaced it with chicken wire (more to come on that in a future post).

In my ideal creative space, I would have a little more natural light (love the dark walls but I wouldn’t hate having one or two more windows), wood flooring, and a buttload of storage. I think I can actually achieve that in this space one day but for now it’s a big upgrade.

Once more – before:

After: