Sorry for the  brief blogging outage this week – I started work and have been busy finishing some projects for our apartment. Fear not, we just had wireless installed in the new place (!) which means that I am writing this post from the comfort of my new Expedit desk and that I will be able to blog more regularly!

I mentioned on Monday that I scored the exact Expedit desk from my mini-office mood board for a bargain in the As-Is section of Ikea. I’ve spent a lot of time this week arranging my craft supplies, photos and treasures into its many cubes and am ready to show it off.

Before we get to the big reveal, let’s take a quick jaunt down memory lane to the recent past. This is the corner of the office I was working with:

And this is what I hoped my space would look like after a little TLC and some furniture investment (see the original inspiration post here):

After some heavy lifting, furniture assembling and organizing, the office is coming along great. Take a look:

I may have been cursing it’s name while Adam and I struggled to fit it in the car and then assemble it together, but now that we’ve installed my Expedit, I couldn’t be more in love. The clean lines, the crisp white finish, the massive amount of storage – it’s everything I needed and wanted in a desk.

Three things to note in these photos:

1. Yes, our ceilings are that low. The Expedit unit stands just over 6 feet tall, which is almost ceiling height on some walls in the apartment.
2. The curtains in these photos are blue, not white. In a strange turn of events, my hubby suggested this beautiful light blue hue while we were standing in the curtain section of Ikea. It was a little twilight zone-ish.
3. We installed the photo ledges behind the desk – I have a tutorial coming your way soon!

I loved creating little vignettes in the cubes. Some are primarily used for storage, while others are purely for display. It’s great to have all of my souvenirs, photos and supplies at hand.

I am a very visual person, so it’s important for me to be able to see what supplies I have available or I won’t use them. The cubes above my desk are used for my stationary (blue photo boxes), stamps and paints (for card making and scrapbooking), photo albums, pictures and a few sculptures I’m proud of at the moment (top right).

The top cubes behind the desk hold magazines, office supplies, and special photos and souvenirs. I love that my pug piggy bank (top center) can wear Torbin’s birthday crown when he’s not using it.

Lower shelves hold fabric bins that I had on hand to conceal my scrap fabric, in-progress projects and other odds and ends. My sewing machine fits perfectly in a cube with thread, needles and an Animal Orb pin cushion and my yarn sits in a beautiful basket from my parents on the floor.

The cubes beneath the desk hold my clay, boxes of created sculptures and my scrapbooking paper.

The only thing I don’t like about my desk is that when I’m sitting at it, I can’t look at it!

To make this a little better, I arranged an homage to “Mother So Dear” on the opposite wall, and hung up my “Pug Shots” wall calendar. A pug lounging in a shoe closet? What’s not to like?

I still need to find a rug, pick out a lamp (I’m planning to use this pretty shade), make the suitcase pet bed and get a proper chair. (Spoiler: I found a beautiful antique chair at a store in town but it needs a lot of TLC so I’m not sure when it will make an appearance on the blog).

Though it’s not done, it’s wonderful. It feels so very me. It’s an inspiring, functional space to create and I couldn’t be more excited.