Home Office Design: Reality Bites
This probably won’t be the last moodboard you see for our eventual home office - God knows how many iterations we’re going to go through before finalizing our furniture and layout choices - but being able to post them here with a narrative is actually really helpful for thinking through everything.
I still like the theory behind my original design, but upgrading to a wider desk to acommodate an external monitor means…
A 21st Century Desk for a Classic Home Office
Another change, which relates to home decor and is the reason for this post, is that I’ve gone from a single laptop that I brought to/from home and my hotdesk at work to external monitors in my office. Yep, I’ve finally joined the modern white collar workforce! I didn’t understand the appeal of having external monitors until I got them, and now I can’t live without them and my wireless keyboard and mouse.
How I Meal Plan and Cook Real Dinners (While Working and Momming), Part Two
Okay, so Part One was the navel-gazing essay. Part two is the practical stuff!
How I Meal Plan and Cook Real Dinners (While Working and Momming), Part One
For many of us, cooking feels like a chore and the idea that we could prioritize it in the name of self-care is beyond strange. I always liked cooking, but through college and grad school it was really a means to an end - the end being entertaining friends over a meal, which I loved doing. A turning point came in 2013/2014, when I was unemployed for nine months. Jon and I were long distance at the time and I lived alone in a studio apartment. My parents were nearby and I had Charlie, but I was lonely, directionless, and deeply depressed. I took refuge in food blogs, meal planning, and cooking elaborate dishes for myself.
Primary Bedroom
As we get closer to our whole house renovation - which will be happening this calendar year, thank God - I’m allowing myself to start designing the new iterations of rooms. Mostly I’m doing it for fun, but there is a practical element to it, too: if we know what furniture we want to use post-renovation, we can sell or donate the rest when we move out and won’t have to pay to store it.
My friend Heather wrote a post a few months ago about the pressures of decorating a “grown-up” home, and I know exactly what she means because we’ve been telling ourselves since we moved into our house that it wouldn’t be our grown-up home until after the renovation. Buying the house was the investment to start; everything else could be put off.