officious: the final(ish) object

So my brand new office? Amazing. So beautiful. So comfortable. So convenient. I think we should take the tour, don’t you?

Here it is! We have a lovely bit of window, don’t we? We’re looking out on a bit of grassy knoll with some greenery (ivy) and, since we’re westerly, we catch as much of the pathetic Pacific Northwest sun as is possible.

Our desks are a cute little matching set… in pretty poor condition, so we made matching blotters to cover the scratched surfaces. It was actually super easy: foam core cut to the right size, covered in black faux leather contact paper. Done and done! Plus, we had leftover contact paper, so we’ve covered other things in our office like pencil cups and the like. Instant classiness!

Here’s Kate’s side. We covered our cork board with some super cute fabric that plays up the color palette of the rest of the room and brings in some great movement and texture to the wall. Plus, notice how much we’re trying to cover up the ugly metal brackets on the wall? Yeah, we were hoping you wouldn’t…

My side. How I love you already. I could compose an ode to how many hours I have already spent cross-legged in that chair, hunched over the computer tapping away. We ran out of fabric for my cork board, but don’t fear: we’re heading back to JoAnn’s this weekend. Please also ignore the lunch dished I didn’t take off the desk before taking this picture.

Seriously, I just like this place. I keep my most-used books on the desk (the rest on their shelves) but the space is big enough that I feel like I can really spread out.

In the window, we have some glass vases painted on the inside with the same paint as we did the walls with. We’re planning on a whole collection of different sizes and colors (the minty green by the window, some orange and yellow by the bookshelf). I also have all of my important images with me…

On the right, Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg — it’s a long story, but I’ll say that Lincoln and I have a special connection. On the far right (cut out by my poor photography) is a framed poem, Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.” On the left, a drawing made by an old friend of an important line from Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. Plus, I like bears. And the globe (which is actually a pencil sharpener. From the kids section of Target. Oh well).

These are two more of the drawings. We’ve got a line from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot and a line from “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne. All of my framed poems and lines are from works that were significant to my growth as a scholar, so I like them to be near me, reminding me of who I am. Cut out on the right is another significant Oliver poem, “Wild Geese” (which I’ve shared with you folks before. On the left, I cut out a picture from my college graduation; it’s of me hugging my advisor after walking off stage after giving the valedictory speech. Pretty big day.

Here’s our comfy spot for visitors. Isn’t that chair amazing? We got it at a Goodwill for a song and just had to recover the seat (surprisingly easy when you have a staple gun). We’re still filling the shelves (we figure there’s no rush — we’re there for 5 years!), but we were quick to get a tea set, tea pot, and french press coffee maker. We’ve got priorities. And do you like the mobile? We made that, too:

Here’s the lesson of our mobile: paint chips are amazing (and the people of Home Depot should be forgiven for hating us because we took so many) and it’s hard to balance three frames on fishing line. We used this as our template, but we substituted old embroidery hoops for the dowels the linked tutorial shows.

So, what do you all think? We did good, didn’t we? It’s funny, but just having that space to go to, where I have no distractions other than my supportive community of fellow teachers and where I can hunker down as long as I need, makes me so much more productive and so much more pleased with my own work. I’m really excited (and nervous!) for the coming year and I feel very pleased with where I’ll be doing that work.

Any additions you think I should make?