My Space (not the defunct social site) Part II

It has turned into a space that everybody likes to stop by and chat with me. Hummingbird likes it because of all the cutesy things and colors. Yogli, for some reason, thinks it's funny and doesn't take it seriously but still stops by to chat. MonkeyMan, I think, likes it and is amazed that I actually did it.

My cloffice (combining a closet and an office) is officially open! 

Now, just a few months ago, I was not wearing a big smile like the one above whenever I walked into this closet. Well, actually, you couldn't really walk into this closet (yikes, look at all of that stuff!):

That was the closet in MonkeyMan's ManCave. The closet became a spot to dump things that we don't use often. Things like MonkeyMan's Jacksonville Jaguars memorabilia, boxes of office supplies, books, my wedding dress (sad, I know, but I'm not one of those sentimental brides when it comes to preserving wedding gowns. I need to get it into somebody's consignment shop), Hummingbird's flower girl dress, crafting odds and ends, birthday party supplies, ok you get the point.

As I mentioned in Part I, everyone had a space in our house except for me. Until now.

Obviously, the first thing I did was clean out that closet, decided what I was keeping, what needed a new home. We are frequent givers to the goodwill, so that's where a few things went. Next, I decided to  buy a table desk instead of affixing a board to the closet walls. Many of the pics I viewed on google showed images of melamine boards attached to the closet walls. MonkeyMan mentioned that we needed to keep each room of the house in good shape because we are moving in 3 years. So, inserting a table desk meant no hammering into the closet wall.

I made a list of everything that I needed from Ikea:

Not sure if Ikea is in your area but you probably could find pieces like these at Target or places similar. Once I had my items, it was time to get it started:

 

Since we wanted to keep the room in tact, I didn't remove the shelving. The shelving would hold the filing boxes, magazine files and craft totes.


















I wanted to feel inspired whenever sitting in my cloffice, so I made sure to have colorful and positive art in my area:

I consider myself a very smart and thrifty shopper. I buy most things when the price has been reduced. This translates into me having cutesy lil knick knack types of things. I took old spaghetti jars, filled them with black and clear stones to have as bookends. Did you know that when the label is taken off of Classico spaghetti jars, there are really mason jars under there! Hummingbird and I made the cutesy mini corkboards. The chair was a cinch to put together. For extra storage, I placed our wireless printer underneath my desk table. A few months back, I found this white mirror at the goodwill for $6. I placed the mirror strategically in a spot so that the light from MonkeyMan's ManCave would hit it and give me extra light in my cloffice. There is an electrical outlet right outside my cloffice, so I have a power strip in order to connect my laptop and printer.

I say all of this to say, use what you have. If you have to buy anything, go to the thrift stores/goodwill. If you go to regular stores, avoid paying full price. I paid full price for one of my cutesy art pieces at Hobby Lobby, went back a couple of weeks later, they were all marked down by 66%.

Now, if you are interested in creating your own cloffice, consider this:

Won't work if you are claustrophobic, most closets in normal sized houses are small. I've seen some google pics of closet transformations that are teeny tiny but sooooo cute! My space worked perfectly because it's a space that you can actually walk into, not like a coat closet. Again, that works for me.

Take a look at what others did with the space they had? Awesome, right?

                      

Google images

Google images

So, welcome to my cloffice. 

Looking forward to some great blog posts coming outta here! 

My Space (not the defunct social site) - Part 1

What do you get when you combine the words "closet" and "office"? A perfect space that you can call yours! **giggling like a lil girl**!

A few months ago, I was thumbing (clicking I should say) through Pinterest and saw how many women were turning empty or messy closets into mini offices. I've always wanted a space I could call my own. Yogli and Hummingbird have pretty much taken over every other room in the house. The dog has her own space. MonkeyMan has his, the unfinished Man Cave. Technically, he has 2 spaces, his spot in our bedroom with a desk and massage chair. But me, lil 'ole me, I've never had a space I could call my own.

All it took was for me to see that first pic on Pinterest. From there, I went a-googling. I am a google fanatic. Soon, I was flipping through pic after pic after pic of these closets being turned into mini offices. At first I thought "that's kinda silly, surely that's not enough space, people will think I am silly". Some of the spaces were so tiny. The more and more I read, I was starting to love the idea. It's actually just the right amount of space. The particular space I had in mind is larger than the closets I was viewing online. It's a walk-in closetl, so a good amount of space to work with. I could make it as cutesy, girly, awesome as I wanted. It would be my space, whatever I wanted to stick in it, I could! Yes, who's getting a "cloffice"? This girl, this girl's getting a cloffice to call her own!

Hmmmmm, since, technically, MonkeyMan has 2 spaces, I could infringe on part of his downstairs Man Cave. After talking and bargaining, he agreed. Ok, that was the first hurdle. Next, I pondered if I should put a desk or what in there. Ok, wait. I am getting ahead of myself.

So, I have the space. I started to think about how I wanted to decorate. Yes, even before I determined what kind of desk, I was way ahead on planning out the decor. I found this on one of my Pinterest tirades,  DIY mini corkboards. Aren't they adorable? They fit so perfectly with my decor and were so easy to make.

First, I took a trip to one of my most favorite spots, Ikea. Here's my trick with Ikea: you MUST make a list of what you need before entering through those doors. If not, you will leave with things you know you don't need but couldn't let them sit there at that price. So again, a list is necessary. And it helps if you go alone, meaning, don't bring the kiddos. This could also mean don't bring the kiddos and the husband. Anyway, I had my list. The round corkboards are actually heat trivets. For this mini corkboard project, I purchased 2 3 pack sets for $2.99 each. One of my other most favorite spots is Hobby Lobby. This place, you can walk in without a list. You can always count on them having items marked down tremendously. I found some fantastic decor pieces here as well, I will talk about those in a later post.

But on this particular day, I got some cutesy fabric swatches to cover my mini corkboards. The lil bundles were packaged so that I could cover 2 mini corkboards with one piece of fabric.

If you're a wannabe crafter like me, then you probably own a glue gun. You'll need one for this project.







Since the cloffice wasn't ready at the time of this decor project, I improvised by using the kitchen table.  I laid all of my materials out, plugged in my glue gun and got this project going.

Lay a piece of fabric over the trivet/corkboard. It may be necessary to trim some of the fabric off, you don't want all that excess fabric on the back. The excess fabric will make it uneven, bulky and ugly when hanging on your wall.







Next, go get your gun, your glue gun, that is. You want to place few drops around the perimeter of the trivet/corkboard, as demonstrated by my helper, Hummingbird.

This was an easy project for us. We actually did this right before dinner one evening. She really enjoyed it, she couldn't keep a straight face for the camera.















Through all the laughter, here's the end result:

Hummingbird could not resist demonstrating one of the uses for our project:

Now, if you want to hang these, I used a long nail and hammered it right in the center of the corkboard.

After all of that, here's the end result:

So, this is one wall of my new cloffice. This picture was taken with a new app, Hypstamatic. Not sure how I feel about it...anyway, yep, think these turned out pretty good.

There's part 1, the start of me telling you the story of a girl who creates her very own space, her cloffice. Wow, there's so much more to tell...the countdown to Part 2 begins.