Finding Home

One of my intentions for the new year is to make our home a more liveable, loveable place to be.  It may not be the house of our dreams, but it is our home, the place where we relax, play, and come together in precious times as a family. Mr. Pom and I have valued making a home over other choices. We love houses, we love furnishing our houses, and we love just being at home.

We have some expensive wishes - new kitchen, bump out the dining room, enclose our porch - but we also have some simple, basic wishes, too. My little art room, formerly a nursery I'm sure, off the master bedroom, was one of the selling points when we bought this house. But the room is small and oddly shaped and has never lived up to its potential. Over the years, it had become more and more crowded with stuff and didn't lure me into wanting to stay in there and make art. Lately, it's turned into a giant closet and my bed has become the studio space. Not great when you're painting, gessoing, and glue-gunning and your poor husband wants to go to bed!

Would you want to work in here? And with your back to the room and the closet up against you. Bad feng shui! Bad!

I've always dreamed of having a studio with a big, high table in the middle of the room to work on and cabinets and counters around the perimeter. That'll have to wait until The Teen moves out and I get to take over the big room on the 3rd floor (with dormers and skylights to put in - don't tell her! She wants to do that. But that's on the expensive list and remember, we're talking easy-peasy, cheap renovations).

My other dream is to have a booklined study with a table by a window. I want to keep my artjournal out and available to work in each day. I'll never get back to the routine of one if I have to gather up paints, stamps, and pens and drag it all into the bedroom. I am, after all, also a writer, and I want a space that is conducive to thinking and writing and where I want to while away an afternoon with a cup of tea and my laptop open working on a piece. Doing same on the bed = naptime.

Trust me, this wasn't what I had in mind:

The odd shape of the room has the armoire up against the door to the hall and a cheap table from one of Mr. Pom's former places of business was a make shift  make-do, and you all know how hard it is to get rid of those fast, but ugly make-do's.

Inspired by Nina's make over of her studio and by this amazing website from The Guardian UK, I was dying to rip apart my little space and install some organization, warmth, and charm. I cleared out the Christmas rubble and began reorganizing in situ, which is lawyer way of saying, I started hauling furniture around without stopping to clear off a space. If I had to move all the stuff off the surfaces and out of the room, I'd never have the inspiration or time to do it. I was doing fine until I got all the furniture turned around in the room and found I couldn't get in or out and had to yell for Mr. Pom, the-accountant-who-wants-every
thing-neat-and-in-a-straight-line,
and dognabbit, he bit his tongue and helped me drag stuff around despite the falling paints, papers, and bundled up rug in the midst of it all!

Et voila:

If I say so myself, is that cool? I have light from the window, I have everything in neat shelves behind me, and I have a pretty room with all my favorite stuff around me.

I even made a bulletin board - can you believe Mr. Pom was once as little as that blue crocheted baby sweater??

No more tubs of fabric stacked to the ceiling in the closet, either. I can now look at and be inspired by all my fabric! (OK, all that I can fit here - the rest is still on the closet shelf and in a coupla tubs in the basement but don't tell.)

Instead of a rat's nest of Clementine boxes and spilling over shelves, I have an orderly arrangement of all my goodies (at least for now).

And I have a sewing area! Yes, it's right up against the desk/writing/painting area, but that's cool. It beats where the sewing machine had been for the last few years (under the desk in its case: can you say unhemmed pants galore?)

Notice I haven't cleaned up everything before I took these photos.
I wanted to show you that I still am creatively messy and it is a studio, not a photo shoot. (And if you had to wait until I neatened up everything, you'd never see it.) At night I can get some artwork done and still watch DVDs so I don't feel so isolated. Instead of the horrid tangle of wires and beat up cafeteria table, I have a cute little shelf unit from The Container Store:

Now I sit at the big desk I bought at Workbench some 23 years ago when I quit my job as a prosecutor in organized crime and started a little country law practice so I could be at home with The Baby Princess. The desk has held up better than I and with the new addition of it's pretty skirt and vintage valance from France (ebay find), I love to go in there and sit. Soon to come are yellow and white check cafe curtains with a pennant valance.

I have to go. There's a desk full of paints and papers waiting for me; I have Palindrome to watch; and I'm going to convince The Teen to make espresso (decaf this time as we both got no sleep last night!)  I LOVE my new space!