DIY Desk Spruce-Up

Despite the fact that I have been at my job more than 3 months, my desk basically looked the same as it did on my first day.  Aside from some documents on my bulletin board and a box of tissues on my shelf, I had no personal touches on my desk.  And without any natural light, I spent my days looking at gray walls under florescent lights.  Not exactly the most inviting or comfortable setup.  So when I met up with some friends for craft club last weekend (yes, I am in a craft club, and yes, it is awesome), I decided it was high time that I made a few things to spruce up my desk!  A short time later, I had a new mousepad, pencil cup, and some flowers that won’t die in my windowless space.

A Calendar for 2013

Last Christmas, my friend Eric gave me this awesome little calendar (thanks, Eric!); it had a different music lyric (June was “let’s go surfing now,” October was “hello darkness my old friend”) printed in a simple font on brown paper, and it came on a mini-clipboard.  I added a strip of magnet to the back and it made a lovely addition to our refrigerator.  I enjoyed it so much that I thought it would be fun to make my own for 2013.  So I spent some way too much time finding a song lyric from my music library that fit each month, and then the perfect font to go with each one.  I ended up printing it on the back of the 2012 calendar.  And viola!  A customized calendar that combines my love of fonts, music, and obsessively searching for things.  Perfect!

 

The Ceiling Project

Inevitably, in every apartment, little things start going wrong as soon as you move in. In Chicago, we had mice. They popped out of the burners on the stove and peered out at us in curiosity. When we started smelling a little extra gas smell after the stove was turned off, we called the management company to complain about mice messing with the gas pipes on the stove. Some dude showed up, looked around at our stove, and then told us there was no problem. He left us a copy of the incident report from the management company. RESIDENT BELIEVES MICE ARE CHEWING ON WIRES INSIDE STOVE, it said. Thanks for all your help. And for making us feel like we are completely crazy.

My apartment now, in comparison to all of the others in which I’ve lived, has had very few problems. Until the heat came on, that is.

The other daily ritual

I love the idea of journals.  A single place for those thoughts, experiences, and ideas both meaningful and mundane; a place to take those thoughts and tease them apart, examine each piece, and put them back together in a different way; a place to come back and visit a preserved version of yourself in a particular moment.  And there’s something about finding a beautiful notebook with crisp, blank pages, ready to be filled with your brilliant thoughts and ideas—it feels like uncovering new possibilities.

But somewhere after the first handful of entries, those blank pages turn from inspiring to overwhelming, my “brilliant” ideas seem dull on the page, and the task of putting my thoughts on the page becomes just too much, and it ends up sitting in a drawer or on a shelf, essentially unused.

Thank You For The Days

I’m not exactly certain where this idea came from or when it manifested.  I suppose that it’s been a long time coming, in many ways.  These past few years have felt like they’ve disappeared in an instant, but more than that, it has felt like all these wonderful little moments have gotten lost and overlooked as I’ve been preoccupied with school, work, to-do lists (although I do love a to-do list), and the like.  So I resolved, a while back, to try and make each day of 2012 a little more memorable.