Where this blogger creates...

Just inside our front door and to the left is my favorite room in the house. I call it my "office" and I do in fact "work" in here from time to time (I teach some online courses a few times a year), but mostly I'm on the computer blogging, shopping, googling and emailing. I also love to scrapbook (though I do so in spurts and not on a regular basis) and have all my supplies and photos fairly organized in this space. Overall, this room is filled with lots of little bits and bobbles that make me happy and inspire me and give you a glimpse into who I am and what I like.

My desk was a taller, primitive sofa table purchased several years ago from my friend Colleene's shop. I cut the legs down and made a black ticking skirt to hide the computer and other storage pieces. I always have little notepads and articles clipped from magazines next to the keyboard, either under the cute kitty paperweight or corralled in the little Hobby Lobby crate. Ryan ordered the bunny tape dispenser for me as a surprise after noticing me admiring it in a little shop in Memphis where we went to buy a wedding gift for a friend there a few years ago.

I looked at this Table Talk Pastry Co. crate several times at the flea market and finally bought it when it went on sale for half off. I keep clips and pins and photo corners in the rusty muffin tins and photos and papers in the drawers. I like the metal and wood combo of the spools and the big roll of black thread on the ironstone pedestal is from Ella Elaine's booth in McKinney.

I have a collection of several vintage cameras, but this toy version might be my favorite of all. This chippy white chest of drawers is from The Seedbox. I recently organized some of my office supplies, paints and sewing notions in the drawers, which I lined with book pages.

This room was originally a dark paneled "study" with tobacco stained wood and red walls. Very nice, really, but not my style. I had all the whole thing painted out white, with the walls my latest favorite shade, Benjamin Moore's Gray Ghost (which incidentally is the name of the novel Dill Harris says he'll give Jem Finch if he is brave enough to run up and touch the Radley house in To Kill a Mockingbird, another favorite). Wainscoting runs neck-high around the space, and I've filled the ledges with lots of my little treasures, taking creative license with the cluttered, collage look of it all. I bought the glittered LOVE garland in Stillwater, Minnesota on a visit with my friend Shannon. My mom had the printer's tray hanging in our house growing up and let me have it. I guess I like minis, as I've got lots of them in this space. Most are little bobbles I've found at flea markets but a few have sentimental connections to family and travel. Like many people I love typography and numbers. My lucky #3 is everywhere in this room. I also have lots of little dogs and cats and other animals.

Ryan and I bought this table for the dining room in our first house 12 years ago. It makes a great work table, and even though it probably looks better centered in the room under the big chandelier, I've found I prefer it pushed over in front of the windows leaving the rest of the room open. I'm short and just skim under the large hanging fixture but poor Ryan forgets and bumps it all the time. It provides major lighting when I need it, but I like the soft glow of just lamps better. Macauley was just asking me a couple of days ago if I would help him buy furniture and things for his house when he moves out someday (of course I will!) and I told him that my dad let me pick out the floor lamp (near the window with the H) from the JC Penney home store when Ryan and I had our first apartment. It might be the only piece from my college years that made the cut in my "grown up" houses. The tall windows look out onto the front porch. I found the bird collage at Winnie & Tallulah's in Athens, Texas the day Macauley and I met Debbie and Cat Daddy.

I thought I could use this big basket to hold scrapbook pages in progress, but right now I've got my flea market binder (with all the pages of sold tags from the 3 years I've had my little booth) and some other odds and ends. I can't resist little drawers when I see them out shopping. These are 2 of my favorites and I've got them filled with stacks of photos I want to scrapbook.

Cats have always been equated with "home" for me, and I love having my old Allie or my pretty black Maya hang out with me when I'm on the computer or working at the table.

I've got all sorts of stuff stashed in this wall of built in cabinets, some of it functional and some of it just for pretty.

I backed 4 of the taller shelves with these French memo boards (from Gordman's, a gift from my parents a couple of Christmases back). I've got ticket stubs and old postcards and flea market finds tucked in the ribbons, even a picture of my Grandpa Jude taken in Paris when he was a soldier during World War 2.

I've got craft supplies in the baskets and drawers and magazines gathered here and there. I love reading magazines but have been making a concerted effort to pare down which ones I keep the last few years. I keep some in this upright drawer, which my Nanny treated me to several years back on a trip to a now defunct shop called Pat's in Bentonville, Arkansas.

I organized the built-ins during the Blizzard of 2011, which looks much better but it seems like when my projects are "out of sight and out of mind" I forget what I have or need to do. I've got a small TV in one of the lower cabinets. I like to watch E! and Bravo and One Tree Hill and 90210 reruns on Soap Net while I work on the computer or do projects. I also just like the background noise.

Some words to live by and my Papaw's folding ruler...

I backed the French doors with burlap. If the room's a big mess, I can just close it off and not greet guests in the foyer with a view of papers and projects everywhere. My friend Amy gave me the book page wreath for Christmas this year.

I feel lucky to have the "room of one's own" Virginia Woolf stressed the importance of, a place to think and create and write and fill with treasures that make me happy, and I spend a lot of time in this room. I'm excited to have a peek at other bloggers' creative spaces via Karen's blog party, and I'm also linking with Debra.