Desk Remodel and Other Office Projects

The new apartment has so much more room for activities! Here's my inherited desk before (thanks mom and dad!). I believe this desk was bought at Target a few years ago and was used by my younger siblings as a computer desk. As you can see, the finish was worn in some places from their little hands, so the Dear Boyfriend took it out into our "backyard" and sanded it all down. Then we got to work with some trim paint that we had bought to touch up some scuffs in the new apartment. I ended up with more paint on myself than the desk, as usual. I wasn't sure how the paint would look on a desk, but I'll leave it to you to judge the results!






Here's another view of the desk :) I'm in love. Please note that both the before and after pictures have our furry children in them. It's nearly impossible to get a picture without one of them jumping in.



Here's a close up of the new drawer pulls I picked up at Pier One. We also got lazy and didn't paint the underside of the desk because, really, who's going to look?



Another one of my office projects. I found this placemat at Target for $3.99, ripped some stitches out, stuffed it and sewed it back up! Okay, I lied about the last part... it's still sitting in my chair with the stitches ripped out because I haven't gotten around to sewing it up. Shh, don't tell.



I finally got around to making the shadow boxes I had been talking about for the last... well, forever. We picked up these shadow boxes at IKEA Houston for next to nothing, and planned to put pictures and souvenirs from our trip to Galveston. That was in March. It's now July. But hey, they're finished!



Here's our last project, or rather, the Dear Boyfriend's last project. I have so many rolls of ribbon that I can't ever keep track of because they float around the house, so we came up with a way to keep them all in one convenient spot :)



This isn't a project, but I did spend the better part of 30 minutes rainbowfying this portion of my children's book collection. Pretty sure the boyfriend thinks I'm nuts.

So what do you think of our office projects?

I'm a blogger now?

As per request, the blog is now up and running! I'm going to take a stab at this whole blogging thing, but I'm new at it... so bear with me. As most of you know, crafting is my part-time hobby and full-time obsession, which I'm now sharing with you!

In honor of friend and coworker Kaleigh Dooley's new precious little girl, Aubriella Kayne (born just yesterday!!), I thought I would share with you a project I made for her baby* shower a couple of weeks ago based off of one I saw here

Cute? Yes. But I wasn't digging the color combination (at the time, we weren't sure of the sex of the baby so I went with some safe yellows and greens instead of multi-colored) or the fullness of the bouquet.

She provides a great tutorial on how to make her version of the baby bouquet. Me? I pretty much decided to wing it. So I ran to the good old Hob Lob for the 2340984th time this summer, picked up some silk flowers (50% off, too!) and floral foam. I already had the floral wire, tape, and flower pot from another projects (the flower pot had actually already been spray painted white thanks to the Dear Boyfriend--more on him later).

After some swearing and major finagling of the aforementioned materials, I came up with this:



I was pretty pleased with myself and bleeding from multiple stabs with floral wire.

So here's what I was able to fit into the bouquet:

-two pairs of the cutest white baby socks
-two hats
-two pairs of oh-baby-don't-scratch-your-face mittens
-two outfits (onsie + pants)
-three plain white onsies
-and probably a couple other things I can't remember


So what do you think of this project? Would you make it for an expectant mommy?

Also, I'm considering taking the "tutorial" approach that most crafty blogs are nowadays. This might take a while since I'm backtracking on a few projects, but I'll get there eventually. Thoughts?

*I actually wrote bridal shower the first time, and it was only after the 4th read-through that I caught the mistake. Wedding on the brain much? I blame the 5 weddings I attended this summer.