I”ll just cut to the chase here, WE FINALLY HAVE OFFICE CHAIRS! Wooo!

Incase you’re new around here, we spotted these white Belisse chairs at Staples back in November (they’re not available online). We fell in love with the idea of white chairs after spotting some at Crate and Barrel. However, they were $999. No, Macky didn’t step on the ‘9’ key there…

We’ve had parson style chairs that were rejects from our dining room in the office up until this point. I thought maybe I’d reupholster them, until we got backaches and had no where to rest our arms. We realized that we needed chairs meant for an office, as badly as I wanted some chic stylish ones. After a little searching for affordable white chairs, we ended up paying just $99 each for these beauties!

I love them. I love that they are a nice bright white, I love that all of the “hard” parts are a nice shiny chrome, I love the modern lines, I love the comfort. And mostly, I love that when you peek into the office from our french doors, you see something less expected. They’re still traditional enough in that they are office chairs, but they add that ounce of modern that makes it look like 20 somethings work in here. They have wheels and armrests, but they’re not the standard CEO-style chair.

I’m a little concerned about them getting dirty, but we’re usually in socks and pajama pants within 5 minutes of getting home, so I imagine some leather wipes will keep them tidy. Though they’re not real leather, so no cows were injured in the designing of this office 🙂

My second fabric sample should be arriving tomorrow. Once that decision is made, I can order fabric for curtains to bring some more white into the room. But for now, our white bookends have some crisp friends to keep them company.

Waaaay back in January, we visited the Crate & Barrel outlet and finally purchased something(s) I’ve wanted for about a year. We scored these bookends for 30% off the original price.

I have always loved the wooden chunkiness of these guys. I love the ampersand and I actually handwrite it often. The “@” symbol has become a little part of me since I started this blog. I comment on other blogs and use it as part of my name multiple times per day. Throw in the discounted price and I felt like we could finally take the plunge…the only problem was where to put them.

I’ve shared our original office plans before, which included built-in cabinets in a dark stain. We have since obviously decided to go with a black/gray/white/green color scheme that the bookends did not fit in with. I thought maybe we could put these in our bedroom or on our dark wood entertainment center in the family room, but at the end of the day they felt much more office appropriate.

The solution? Spray paint them white.

I know, it hurts. I love the wood grain in these possibly more than anyone. My rustic loving self is still shaking this one off. But at the end of the day, the symbols were the right fit for the office. I’d rather have white symbols than no symbols. So yesterday, despite 20 mph winds, I managed to get outside to do some spray painting. Scratch that, I decided to spray paint in the garage. No worries, I left the doors open of course, I just needed some barrier from the wind.

I used the same box that I used to spray paint my Pier 1 star basket at Christmastime, how is that for thrifty? 🙂

After a quick coat, I was feeling much better about my decision.

It was a little tricky to get in all of the nooks and cranies of these things, but all it took was one coat and a round of touch ups and we were good to go!

They are definitely different than they were before, but I love the crisp modern vibe that the white gives off.

I love the contrast between the shelves and the symbols and how they add that pop of white we’ve wanted to have in this room. Once we add the other white items we have planned, as well as some actual books to the shelves, I know they are going to look great!

ps- I did use my green spray paint this weekend, but the verdict of that project is still pending…

Since the weather this weekend is supposed to be this…

I’m hoping to finally get outside to play with this…

And even some of this…

I bought this spray paint a while ago, but because of cold, rain and being busy, I haven’t had a chance to use it. I’m hoping to spray some office accessories this weekend, as long as the weather cooperates. I would tell you what I’m spraying, but I am slightly nervous to take my beautifully traditional things and make them funky with glossy green spray paint. It is either going to be a brilliant idea or a complete disaster.

Good thing I have this blog to publicly humiliate myself if this doesn’t work out, but I have a feeling I’ll be just fine 🙂

I know it’s Wednesday, which is normally What I Ate Wednesday, but Mike and I are being super lazy this week. I’m on spring break from school (yay!) so we’re trying to enjoy my stress free days with lots of catching up on shows and ice cream on the couch. We made shepard’s pie again this week since we loved it so much last week. We’ve been eating the leftovers of that, plus some pizza and bagels we got from a visit to my parents’ this weekend. So we’ve been rather uneventful food-wise… as well as house-wise. We’ll be back to our normal antics this weekend 🙂

One thing I’m hoping to decide on this week is the fabric choices for the office. Here is where we are as of tonight…

These are all from the Ty Pennington collection at fabric.com. Who knew Ty made fabrics? Weird. I was drawn to them because of the mix of greens, grays and white that would perfectly compliment our gray stripes and green carpet. Plus I could have sworn they were around $8/yard compared to the Dwell Studio or Waverly fabrics which were around $16/yard. But of course, after I order samples the prices go up! Or maybe I’m imagining things…

My number one choice from these options is the one I thought I would love and the reason why I chose these fabrics- the white “kaleidoscope” one as Mike calls it…

It’s the blossom pattern in chartreuse.  I love this for a few reasons… 1) it has both shades of gray from our stripes 2) it has a white background to lighten up the room 3) it has a circular pattern to compliment the linear-ness of the stripes. Online Mike thought it was too girly, but after seeing the sample he agrees with me. This pattern will make our curtain panels, plus it will cover half of our Ikea storage boxes.

I want another pattern to add to the mix so it’s a little more interesting in this space. The second fabric will just cover some of the storage boxes so it’s more of an accent, I suppose. I thought this one was a shoe-in, but after seeing it, I don’t think it’s graphic enough or bold enough in the color department to compete with the stripes and blossom…

Then I thought maybe this bright green one would be good since it has such a visually appealing pattern, but I think it’s too much green…

So I was left with this guy, the birdy one…

Online I wasn’t crazy about this, but once I put it next to the blossom pattern? Something happened. And I liked it.

I like that it has a dark gray background, as well as some light gray birds to blend everything together nicely. Besides owls, I’m not a big bird person. The fabric isn’t appealing to me on it’s own, but within this context? I like it.

However, Mike does not. He’s not feeling the birds… or the butterflies. I’ve tried, it ain’t happening. Whaaamp whaamp.

I pick and choose my battles and this just wasn’t worth any sort of battle for 2 little boxes. We try very hard around here to make rooms we both love and enjoy, so if Mike really despises the birds, I’m not going to use them. I’m thinking of ordering one more sample in this pattern…

I know there is no green in this one, but I think that it’s the dark gray of the birdy one that makes me like it. We’re planning a couple of other green things around the room so I’m not sure I necessarily need any more green.

Halfway back to the drawing board I go! Goal: to get the perfectly gender neutral office!

I mentioned last week that Mike and I were headed to Ikea over the weekend for some extra storage. I also had another mission in mind- an area rug. You were all very helpful in my past office area rug plea, but after painting the stripes, I decided I no longer wanted a patterned rug. This was one of the reasons why I started this blog, to chronicle the adventures of me changing my mind and rooms evolving 🙂 I just thought it would be a little much to have a large graphic rug with such dramatic walls. I remembered that when I went to Ikea looking for a patterned rug, there was a perfect color green solid rug. So my main reason for going to Ikea Friday night? To pick up that rug.

When we finally made it down to the rug section (who am I kidding, Mike and I go to Ikea so often that we fly through the upstairs in about 15 minutes!), I spotted the rug and ran over. It was marked as “last chance” and the only size left was the larger one, which was nearly 7’x10′. Right before we left, I measured out a 5’x7′ area and figured that would be a good size. I was fairly certain this large one would be too big, but it was a low-pile and the perfect color. Oh and it was $199. Seriously Ikea, every other rug you have is like $19.99, yet I manage to find a $200 rug?! The price scared me and the size scared me, but what scared me even more? The fact that it was “last chance”. Our dining room furniture was last chance and I wanted it for months. When we finally went to pick it up, we ended up on a wild goose chase to Brooklyn to find our table. “Last chance” brings back awful memories for us, so we decided to pick it up and if it was too big or we had buyer’s remorse, we could always return it.

So now we’re carting around a nearly 10ft rug when we once again walk by the Mongstad mirror I’ve wanted for years.

I have just been waiting for this thing to magically disappear, since every time we go and decide not to buy it, I feel like I’m playing with fire. We have an SUV now and we figured our desktops are 80 inches long and they fit, so maybe this would too? We measured the Mongstad and it was only 75 inches long with packaging!!! Score! Let’s bring that home too! Here we are with our carts of oversized purchases, that’s Mike in front of me…

We also got some doors for our Expedit bookcase, 2 white planters for the porch in the spring and some more storage boxes. We waited on line for.ev.er. Really we walked through the store and picked up all of this loot faster than this line moved.  We paid for our stuff and headed out to the car…

We put down the seats and start to slide the mirror in… it doesn’t fit. Wait wait! We can move our seats up a little! So we do. And it’s still sticking out of the back of the car. It’s about 25 degrees and windy, so I really don’t want to drive with my rear door open. Plus we couldn’t figure out where the heck to tie it down. We realized at this point that we are morons. The desks are much more narrow than this mirror and we were able to put them diagonally and push them up on our center console a bit. No such luck with this giant mirror. So we figure we’ll move our seats aaaall the way up just to get the mirror in and once we get the rear door closed, we can push them back a bit.

So Mike pushes the driver’s side seat up and I push the mirror in and close the rear door. I get to the front of the car and I see Mike, completely smooshed against the steering wheel, as if he is driving a clown car. I couldn’t hold it in, I doubled over with laughter. I asked him if he wanted me to drive and he said no, he just wanted to get out of the parking lot before someone saw him. I also tried to take his picture to insert here and he told me that he was suffering enough and did not need the moment documented on my blog for all eternity. I respected his wishes and will attempt to show you the ridiculousness of this situation with a picture of my own knees…

My knees are normally no where near the front of the car. I actually had to reach back to reach the cup holder. We laughed the entire way home and hoped that no one would stop next to us at red lights because we looked that ridiculous. I believe my seat was actually angled forward because by the time we got home, my back was killing me.

But I got my giant mirror finally!!!! 😀

On Saturday Mike cut holes in the office wall to hide the TV wires, but the power cord we had was too short so he had to order a longer one. I’ll take pictures of the much cleaner looking TV when the last wire is hidden! But we did install these guys…

We planned to go with white doors but when I saw these glossy dark gray ones, I couldn’t resist! Mike also drilled some holes in the backs of these to hide the Mac Mini and the battery chargers to our Shark Stick Vacs (every pet owner needs one!)….

So far I’ve only stuck a few things on this bookcase since I knew Mike would have to move it again this week once the new wire arrived.

Saturday night we rolled out our giant rug. Upon first roll, it was ginormous and I was nervous. We had to wiggle it under Mike’s desk since his computer was already hooked up, so we didn’t get that immediate feeling of the size. But once we rolled it out? It’s perfect! Macky obviously agrees!

He seriously did this about 2 seconds after we let him back in the room after rolling out the rug. He should be an Ikea spokesman…and yes he’s playing with a roll of frog tape, sign him up to sell that too! 🙂

Here’s a room shot from Sunday morning.

At least now the price doesn’t seem so outrageous for such a large rug! Really, I think any smaller would have looked funny and once we get chairs in there they will roll right to the back edge of the rug on either end. Speaking of chairs, we did stick to one plan…

We picked up 2 of these chairs I first spotted in Staples back in November. They were actually even cheaper than the “sale” price back then and we got them for $99!! The boxes were stacked on the floor in a display, so we were able to judge the size and thought they’d fit in the car. We almost had a repeat of Friday night, but thankfully we got them in…

We still have to put them together, but we’re almost there!

For those of you wondering what these fabric samples I posted yesterday were for?

Curtain panels and possibly covering some of the storage bins we have. I want something with some white, gray and green in it to bring everything together so I’m working on a solution 🙂

One last time for that Macky video!!

Isn’t he adorable?? 🙂