Olive and Love: Office

It's hard for me to take 'final' pictures for my home tour. My house is constantly evolving. In fact I had to go take an updated picture just now to accommodate for my new Axylotl tank I have on my desk.

Meet Copernicus.

Before the tank my desk was something more like this. You can see I have four Bedford filing cabinets from Pottery barn in a row with an Ikea bookshelf (legs unscrewed) on top. I forgot the name of this shelf from Ikea, but it is the same kind (but smaller) as the color coordinated library bookshelf in my family room. I don't believe it is still available at Ikea. In the shelf I have baskets with projects, white notebooks with hundreds of pages from magazines, and green magazine files from Ikea to store paper, directories, art books and other items.

My wall mounted in-box is a peg board cut to fit an ornate gold frame. I have baskets that hold file folders labeled by priority or project. The inbox basket on my desk was turning into a big catch all, and the stacks of papers seem to breed. I have to keep my method of organization fresh or I seem to lose interest in maintaining it.

My desk is from the 1920's. I fell in love with it immediately when I found it at the thrift store. It's a dinning table and I'm using the six matching chairs in my dinning room with the shutter wall. I'm tempted to paint it but I think I may just refinish it and cover the top with a nice piece of glass to protect the wood.

The desk is a bit high for my giant green yoga ball that I used to sit on, so I had to design my own yoga ball chair which is working out great.

And perhaps you remember the picture of my "fugly" couch from Olive and Love's Facebook site?

Well I like it, even though my husband thinks it's the most atrocious thing he's ever seen. You either love it or you hate it. And quite frankly I think I saw something like it in the anthropology catalog not too long ago ...so there! The star/flower pillow on top of the couch has also created similar love or hate reactions in people. Milton, however, loves both (as can be seen in the above picture).

My curtains are four 96" sheets of fabric that I clipped up four years ago when we had a big weekend party and needed another bedroom. Since then I decided I really liked them, and had my mom in law serge the ends to prevent them from unraveling.

I have a fabric covered bulletin board for art ideas, art work and pictures.

My 72 drawer card catalog is perhaps one of my favorite furniture evolution projects of all times. It stores a lot of art and office supplies. You can see my kid blocks that read "please remove shoes" has now been banned to my office. The rule still applies to kids whose shoes are constantly full of sand and covered in dirt.

To the left of my exterior french doors are two bookshelves from the unfinished furniture section of Lowes. On top of them I have random sticks and twigs and containers for some random projects in the future.