Now that I am a newlywed, people are always asking, “So, how’s married life?” My response is always the same: It’s a lot calmer than being engaged. And I like it. With the wedding three months behind us, Rob and I have a chance to shift our attention back to other things … like turning the little condo we are renting into a home. It started with the basics of furniture arrangement and organization (which took several weeks to accomplish).
Last week, Rob and I proudly completed the gallery wall in our dining area. Since that basic task took a few weeks for us to complete, I surprised myself this weekend when I styled a cute little area in our home office.
We have little nook of wall space in the office beside the closet that is an ideal location to store supplies that we need in a hurry. I have been wanting a small piece of furniture hold supplies for quite some time and we got a great bargain on this distressed cabinet at Home Goods a few weeks ago. Since then, it’s been sitting in the office while I played musical chairs with the accessories. Jars of pens and pencils rotated on and off the cabinet as well as both our typewriters, a few different pencil sharpeners, a notepad … so many items.
I had a complete “Eureka!” moment this weekend when all of the accessories came together and I finally achieved the look I was going for. We took the plunge and finally hung the beautiful House of Belonging wall art that we received as a wedding gift from my friend Melanie at Schoolgirl Style.
As you know, Rob and I are saving for a house, so our decorating budget is pretty limited. I was proud to completely style the top of our little cabinet with items we already owned!
We purchased the typewriter to use as a guestbook at our wedding. We didn’t mind splurging a little for wedding accessories that we could actually keep and use in our home.
The wooden planter box is also a wedding accessory which we had purchased special for the event. My amazing floral designer, Deborah, assured me that these beautiful boxes from BHLDN would make a great household accessory after the event. She was right!
The flowers are silk mums I purchased at Michaels two years ago. In my old apartment, I had placed them in a glass vase, but I greatly prefer the wooden planter box. The rustic look has a lot more character than a generic glass vase.
I inherited the putty-colored stapler during my first year of teaching (probably a hand-me-down from my mom’s classroom). I hated the color at the time and buried it in my file cabinet. I rediscovered the stapler this summer and brought it home because I needed something better quality than the blue plastic stapler I had been using. As it turns out, the putty stapler is very much like the ugly duckling. It looks perfect in this space. The gorgeous gold stapler that I have been drooling over on Amazon wouldn’t look right in this corner at all.
I’ve been reusing old jars to hold office supplies for years and my old jelly jar filled with Ticonderoga pencils is a perfect accent to the classic typewriter and soft gold hues of the mums.
Our home office is finally starting to take shape. On one end of the room sits our table and the new upholstered chairs we recently scored at Home Goods.
Our newly styled cabinet sits at the other end of the room.
There’s a whole lot of blank wall space on each side of the room (which we have yet to devise a plan for) but at least the brown carpeting looks a little less ugly with all our personal touches.
Rob and Maria, I just love your newly decorated room. It’s funny that you should pick out the pretty gray chairs and the design on the left front of your distressed cabinet. We bought a pretty gray & white carpet with that exact design in it. Your cabinet would look great sitting on top of the carpet in our room. You both did a great job with that room, I really love it.