Free Time

With Dan working full-time on his first service trip of the summer, I'm left with the inevitable free time that comes with his trips each year. Lucky for Dan, I tend to get a bit of a cleaning/organizing bug when I get bored, so I have big plans for tackling my Summer Project List with some of the down time I'm already in the midst of. That's right... it is time to organize the office. And I'll admit it, this is bound to be a daunting task.

An impromptu trip to my one of my favorite places in the world - Ikea - left me with some new organizing goodies, specifically two of these plain old magazine boxes, which fit perfectly in my coveted Expedit bookshelves:


They're boring, I know, but they will hold (and hide) some of the random stuff that really doesn't need to be out in plain sight but can't get shoved down in the basement or in the back of a closet somewhere.

I also picked up new fun patterned file folders at Target, which will make going through all of my old bills and papers that have stacked up that much more enjoyable. What is it about a pretty office supply that makes using it so much more fun? Since most of the folders will end up in my bin where I keep every important paper imaginable, I might just have to order a few of these to keep out with more timely bills and whatnot in them:

Products/Images from Knock Knock

Since Dan and I are sometimes fans of doing things backwards, the plan right now is to get everything clean and organized, and THEN paint. I know I know, it makes no sense at all, but if you saw our office you would understand. At this point, there is absolutely no way it could be painted anyways since it's such a disaster. It doesn't help that the room was used as our "storage" for everything when we first moved... it's been a mess since the day we got there! So, with any luck I'll get everything in it's place this week and then move everything to the center of the room and paint later on in the summer.

Which leaves me with the most fun task of all... picking a color! Like my turquoise bathroom, I think an office is a good place to have a little fun with color. Case in point:


I love love love this office (and have posted about it before), and today I found the blog where it came from! Ramblings of a Renovating Couple is my new favorite read and I can't wait to draw some inspiration from their other DIY projects!

Although I love the candy apple green in the Renovator's office, I can't help but be drawn to another more subdued color combo of gray and marigold yellow. Originally my thought for the front porch, I'm leaning more towards using this in the office instead, and keeping the porch more neutral to go with the living room just on the other side of the window.

Here's some gray and yellow eye candy I've been drooling over:

Even with all of this visual inspiration, the question of what color to paint the walls still remains. Gray seems... blah, but yellow just... screams. Seeing as there isn't a whole ton of wall space in the room in the first place, I'm tempted to do the wall with the dormered ceiling in a yellow, and the rest of the room gray. Picking the color shades will be tough, but the designer in me loves the idea of using "Mimosa", the Pantone 2009 Color of the Year:

As the Pantone website states: "In a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow." Perfection in a color - I think so.