For years I have fantasized about having an office in my home. Just a small space that was reserved for work stuff and the collection I don’t want in my living space because I like my house to look like a grown up lives there:

The life I envision for myself involves a room devoted entirely to sex toys and Muppets.

— JoEllen Notte (@JoEllenNotte) January 27, 2014

I even knew that when I had this space the walls would be decorated with my picture of Bobby Orr’s 1970 Stanley Cup winning goal and the Jim Henson Apple ad. When I was looking for an apartment I gave up on that fantasy pretty quickly but I was pretty happy that my apartment had a place for my kitchen table- it was the one place I looked at that did. Cut to a year and a half later when I injured my back while helping the cute boy move (on the anniversary of my father’s death- we’ll talk about the mind/body pain thing one day) and came home and found that any and all sitting was painful and my habit of working slumped on my couch was AGONY. (yeah, turns out it was a hip thing rather than a back thing…) I looked around my apartment and realized that while I worked almost every day, I sat down to meals at my kitchen table almost never- in fact I mostly used it for storage.

Yep, it holds my stand mixer and recycables.

The window back there? It’s the biggest one in my apartment. Kind of a waste.

So a brainstorm hit. I would take the lovely, window-lined nook in my kitchen, pull out the table and replace it with an office space. Due to all the hip/back pain I decided I wanted this space to have both an actual desk and a standing work space so I could stand while I worked. So, over the weekend I recruited the help of the cute boy and we transformed part of my kitchen into my office and I LOVE it. Not only do I have some space reserved  for nothing but work but I finally have a home for all sorts of stuff that was tucked in odd corners of my apartment and mentally filed under the heading “if I had an office, this would live there”, also, it’s really cool! Here are some pictures:

My desk, complete with sparkly lights.

My printer lives in an old nightstand now, Appropriate, no?.

The bags from the Superhero tour have been without a home for a while- now they’re back!

When I got to OR I noticed how much they liked putting things in Mason jars and pint glasses… what better way to store the lube samples?

So, that all looks great, right? But what about the standing work space I mentioned? Well, the cute boy built me something (he’s more than just cute, people!) and it is maybe the coolest part. Check it out:

So, there was an ironing board built into the wall

The cute boy built me this instead.

We painted it with chalkboard paint.

Here’s the finished product.

So, that’s my new office. Happy places for my printer, my office supplies, my business cards, all sorts of sex toys and, of course, the Muppets. It’s a happy day in Bedhead world.