I wound up having to re-decorate my office barely two months after I finished my Haunted Cathedral theme. It was fun while it lasted, as they say.

What happened? My house had been literally pulled apart and scattered for over six months, and it was finally time to deal with the fall-out. (I opted to keep our major home renovation out of my blog, because it went on and on and on starting when the A/C debacle ended in May. Among other reasons, I didn’t want this to turn into a HOME RENOVATION blog. You already had to sit through my posts about the A/C.)

After ignoring the mess for so long, I finally jostled myself awake from my stupor of resistance and willful procrastination. Being grounded post-surgery left me with no more excuses. Plus, I didn’t like having a room piled high with stuff. I wanted my guest bedroom back!

That’s right – despite minimalizing more during the renovation, we still had things piled up in the guest bedroom. We had furniture and rugs; bedding and lamps; pictures and candles; cushions and clocks and wastebaskets; cat toys and kitchen items; tools and leftover parts; old fixtures and just, I don’t know, odds and ends of all kinds… because in addition to our own stuff, we had renovation leftovers and debris. There were items to be trashed. There were items to be returned to Home Depot. We had yet more things for the Goodwill. Some of the stuff, we gave away. Some of it went into the alley for college students to scavenge.

And inevitably, I guess, some of it ended up in my office, where it disrupted the Haunted Cathedral theme I’d just completed. Truth be told, I felt kind of selfish having this perfectly decorated room all to myself while there were things that had nowhere to go. All the furniture-rearranging and storage space reorganizing (four closets!) I did wasn’t enough.

There was no use in fighting it. Ultimately, though, chaos became a catalyst as creative energy took over and inspired me in the direction of a new vibe. I got into it!

Revolving around the black moon tapestry that used to be in our bedroom, the vibe in my office turned out to be celestial and futuristic, and the space homey rather than merely decorated. Where office v1 was plants-only/no decor, and office v2  was Haunted Cathedral/themed decor, this new version is simply an agglomeration of stuff over which I threw some blue string lights; I took the jumble of miscellany and tried to shape it into something that proclaims I meant to do this. The string lights and the new tapestry above my desk are my only new acquisitions. They help to make sense of it all.

By day:

 

(The moon tapestry used to be in our bedroom. It came down when we painted the whole house, and we never put it back up. It inspired my new vision for this space.)

 

(Nenette has to have her glass of water at all times. ~I’m trying hard to save Jerome there on the left side of the bookshelf. It’s not looking good. Sad face.)

 

(Here’s my new tapestry, one of the two things I bought… this, and the string lights.)

 

 

(These are the same flowers I had in my Haunted Cathedral theme.)

 

(I’m already in January. I didn’t want to wait to hang up the calendar, which was a gift from Callaghan.)

 

(I accidentally bought a roll of string lights 10 miles long. The bulk of the roll ended up in the Buddha’s lap.)

 

 

(The dress is hanging there temporarily. I wore it to a party last weekend, and I’ll wear it to another party this weekend. Then it will go back into the closet.)

 

(Still, “No one is perfect.” This tee is still where it was, only it’s behind the dress at the moment. Grendel the Gargoyle also remains.)

 

(I’m finding it easier to capture Nenette in this new office arrangement.)

 

 

At dusk:

 

(As the day darkens, you can see my laughable attempt at shaping the lights into a Capricorn symbol. It’s close enough, though. ~The brown patches on the cream rug are made of Nenette’s bronze fur. She loves to sleep on this rug. I didn’t lint-roll it for these pics. This is real life.)

 

 

 

(Flamingo the tree, that is.)

 

(Office in the front, club in the back!)

 

At night:

 

 

(She sleeps on all of the rugs, actually.)

 

(I love the combination of the pink salt lamp and the blue lights. They create a purple light.)

 

(Plant family!)

 

 

(The antique mirror leans in the corner behind Flamingo, my tree. It’s a place of honor.)

 

 

(The Haunted Cathedral isn’t going anywhere. It’s staying right where it’s been from Day 1).

 

 

And there you have it.

Incidentally, the completion of this project happens to coincide with the revision phase of my novel, which I’ll tell you about in a near-future “writing updates” post.

I hope you enjoyed this unexpected office updates post! Thanks for sticking around, always.