My maternity leave is drawing to an end, and I am both dreading and anticipating returning to work, if that makes any sense. There are things I’m really looking forward to: being around other adults, working on projects, and having an ongoing reason to get dressed before noon a few days a week. But of course I’ll miss being around the kids, especially since Dylan has officially entered the Adorable Cooing Phase of babyhood.
At any rate, when I get back to work at the start of May I’ll need to update some of the family photos I’ve got in my office. I mean, now there’s a whole new child to proudly display. Plus, I’d like to spruce things up in general — my workplace had just moved to a new building before I went on leave, so my office is kind of drab since I hadn’t bothered to personalize it much before leaving it empty for twelve weeks.
Do you have any cool ideas for spiffing up a workspace, and including items that remind you of your family? I’d love to hear them! Here are a few things I’ve been looking at:
L’il DaVinci Store & Display Art Cabinet. This is a very cool display solution for kids’ artwork — it’s a hinged case that let you store up to 50 pages of various masterpieces, and you just swap out top display pages as you see fit. Sure, you’re proud of your child’s burgeoning artistic genius, but do your coworkers really need to see fifty-three different variations on Random Scribble: This Time Featuring A BLUE Crayon?
Make a picture wall collage. This site has some wonderfully inspirational images for wall collages, including some plans you can download and use. I would love to get off my butt and create a wall collage of family photos in my own house (or just display some photos PERIOD, jeez) but it would sure be awesome to do in my office space. You could even do this sort of thing on a cubicle wall with the right kind of clips.
Hang a really cool poster. I was reminded by a post over at [BB-Blog] that Allposters.com, despite their ham-handed email marketing (seriously, if you ever buy from them they will hound you relentlessly afterwards until you opt out), has a fantastic selection of posters, including a ton of beautiful vintage prints that would make a lovely addition to an office. Of course, you could always go the snarky route and hang a few Despair prints, and hope you don’t get dinged on your performance review as a result.
Light Affection Lamps. I don’t know how I stumbled onto this website but I love the idea: these guys take a photo that you send them and create a nightlight or lamp from the image, using a carved insert that illuminates when backlit. A standing light using a favorite family photo would be a very cool piece of office decor.
You have SOOOO many fabulous pictures, what about a digital frame? I do love collages, but then there is always the next great photo that you didn’t include, the digital one is easy to keep fresh. Plus uploading vs. printing, cutting & pasting - no contest.
ELC | April 19th, 2008 at 2:02 am
I don’t know how much shelf or desktop space you have, but a unique conversation piece to brighten up your workspace would be handblown art glass. It could be a sculpture, a vase for putting flowers in, or even a paperweight. Check out my handpicked selection of handblown art glass here: http://www.hometreasurecove.com/handblownartglass
Michelle | April 21st, 2008 at 6:01 am
My cube is filled with Happy Bunny prints (my favorites are, “Please put all questions in the form of a compliment” and “I have a dream, and in it, something eats you”.
I also have printouts of photos, a pirate skull, a lava lamp, and a magic eight ball.
thejunebug | April 21st, 2008 at 6:34 am
hmm i am a huge fan of a few toys on the desk so that whoever comes in has something they feel safe picking up and playing with while chatting (eases nerves and starts conversatinos!)
as for photos - i am terrible with this - i have a few from when DS was less than a year old (he will be 2 soon!) and co-workers often ding me that i need to UPDATE! But they are all digital. i also am a super-slacker in that i HAVE a digital photo frame, but need to update the pics. hubby is the holder of all pics and therefore they have not been updated! (but thanks for the reminder as i will nag him now haha!)
as for how to spiffy up your office - bring in a lamp from home, a plant or two, and one or two things that are just an experession of YOU instead of corporate rhetoric… things that making walking into your office happy and fun, allowing you to breathe easy and smile
Kate | April 21st, 2008 at 1:16 pm
PostIt has a really neat Self-Stick bulletin board. (Think of a PostIt note, except much bigger and backwards.) The resticky side is on the outside so you can hang and change photos without tape, holes or opening frames. Also, no damage to the photos. Several different colors available.
I guess you could also use it to hang work related memos and such if you had to.
Wendy M | April 24th, 2008 at 5:23 pm