Hello Monday – PLAYWORKEATREPEAT

Hi friends, I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Just popping in to say a quick hello and share a few snaps from mine—thanks so much for stopping by.

Saturday

Saturday morning, I woke up with a burst of “wait, I’m not ready for the holidays to end!” energy. I guess it was a mix of motivation and mild panic! Suddenly, I had the urge to completely revamp our converted garage, which doubles as my office space.

I lay in bed, mentally rearranging furniture and trying to figure out how to make the most of the small space. I guess you could say I had hit that point where I just wasn’t loving being in there anymore. Which is no good because that’s where I blog. And even though I’m usually good at decluttering, it had (I confess) slowly turned into a bit of a dumping ground–yikes!

Our house is small, and since we converted the garage, we lost that extra storage space for things like Christmas decorations, fold-up tables and chairs, car cleaning supplies, fans, boxes of random stuff, and 15 cactus-shaped tall drinking glasses with little Mexican hats and straws. You know, essential items–haha!

I came up with the idea of running a curtain from almost the ceiling to the floor along one end of the garage to hide all the boxes. Before that, they were “hidden” behind a cute IKEA screen—which only sort of worked if you’re on the shorter side (like me). I spent a lot of years pretending those boxes didn’t exist.

Then I swapped out my desk. I had been using a wooden dining table we got for our first rented flat when we were first married. It’s too good to throw out and, gee, I guess it’s sentimental. We saved hard for that perfect dining table, and I remember being pregnant and my husband and I trying to lug it up three flights of stairs to our flat. My bump kept getting in the way as we turned the corners.

Back to my office refresh—I swapped the dining table for Sam’s old desk that we’d been storing there. I made a quick dash to Kmart for a curtain rod, white storage boxes, a rug, a curtain, a lamp, and a couple of fake plants. Then I spent most of Saturday afternoon rearranging everything and putting it all together, and voilà—here’s the result.

The curtain solution

All the boxes are now behind the curtain. And while you can sort of see them through the sheer fabric, it still makes the space feel so much tidier. The chaos is hidden!

And here’s the refreshed office area

It feels so much brighter and calmer now.

I love how these plants will grow in water and no sunlight. Perfect for a plant assassin like me!

I mixed things up with a fake plant like this one.

I didn’t take any before photos because this whole project was completely spur of the moment. Initially, I thought if my curtain idea to hide all the boxes didn’t work. Then I’d just give the space a quick tidy and leave it at that. So I didn’t bother with photos. I wish that I had because I’m so happy with how it turned out.

All the furniture was already in there, but it was just smooshed in. Now it’s placed in a way that actually works, and I love it! My husband thinks I want to move in there (he’s probably right!).

Christmas in July

My lovely cousin J and her family hosted Christmas in July on Saturday evening. We wore our ugly Christmas jumpers and enjoyed some delicious turkey, ham, roast potatoes, and cornbread muffins from Walmart. I’ve used up all my Jiffy Packet mix, but my cousin is going back in October for a wedding and will be bringing some more back—yay!

And that was my weekend. Nothing much happened on Sunday. I spent the day getting a few things done to get ready for going back to work. A few episodes of Seinfeld also kept me happy and distracted from impending reality!

How was your weekend? I hope it was a good one.

Linking up with Holly and Sarah