Desk progress

Do you recall our desk dilemma?

Well, we've been working on said desk area and I've got some progress to show you.  The area is evolving as time and money allows and overall we love this space.  I do our family paperwork here, the kids watch ridiculous youtube videos  do homework here, Reeve LOVES to color here and it's also a great workspace for puzzling.  Yup, it's a great space.

Once we had our beautiful desk top, I set about to find some filing cabinets.  I ended up scoring some for FREE off of Kijiji.  The catch was that we had to pick it all up.  And when I say all, I mean all 20+ pieces of a desk set up.  Huge countertops, lumber, cabinets etc...  There was a lot, but after a 1/2 hour of sweating and lugging it all out of a deep basement we had our 3 free filing cabinets and Goodwill had all of the extras.  I gave the cabinets a couple coats of Annie Sloan French Linen chalk paint and they're perfect.

We ended up ordering a large 8 foot glass piece to sit on top of the butcher block.  We wanted the kids to be able to draw, color and just USE the desk without fear of marker-ing up the wood and gauging it.  It was pricey at $226, but we are so glad we went ahead with it.  Since we used our yard sale profits for the entire cost of the counter top, and the cabinets were free....we didn't think it was unreasonable to spend the money to protect it.

Eventually we'd like to add some shelves on either sides of the window, however I suffer from a disease called "I need everything done yesterday" and it hasn't always worked out so well for me.  I've been known to change my mind....often.  SO, I'm intentionally NOT putting shelves up until I am absolutely, 99% sure that I will love them.  I've bought them.  I hold them up.  I ask Henry to hold them up.  Occasionally I ask my kids to hold them up.  But, I haven't hung them up yet. My patient husband is wondering what on earth has happened to his wife.  Progress people, progress!!

For now, here some glimpses of our desk space decorated with a little Christmas love.

 I love getting Christmas cards.  And photos.  I've just never had a good idea for displaying and storing them.  Until this year!  On so many blogs, I've seen people use simple baskets and bins to simply corral them and then set them out for people to enjoy.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before really, because it is so simple.  I've always imagined them being strung up somehow, but the clutter of that drove me crazy.  I dug out this cute basket (which I had initially bought at Goodwill for $1 and wanted to use for storing my eggs in the fridge ~ how cute would that be, thank you Pinterest)  Except my kids handle the eggs, and well...they are better off in their little carton.  I used some gold ribbon from my craft cabinet and wove it through.  After snipping some cedar branches off my tree in the backyard, I'd say it's a pretty little card basket that cost me virtually nothing!

 

 I'm really hoping to get around to organizing those filing cabinet drawers over the Christmas holiday break.  All of our desk contents are still in storage in the laundry room and we'd love to start getting some order back to more spaces.