Makeovers For the Office

If you simply must stare at your wokspace 40 hours a week, shouldn’t it at least be attractive? That’s the philosophy behind Kelley L. Moore’s hooray-for-hipbook, “Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space From Drab to Fab” (available from BOOKSAMILLION.COM).

The book is packed with gorgeous pictures and countless ideas for turning your Jane Hathaway office into a knock0ut. Moore, an interior decorator and designer from Seattle, takes the drab and makes it fab by injecting the personality and likes/dislikes of the occupants into the design. Each “cubicle” is given a theme, such as the ones below:

• The Garden Cube: (For those of us who could honestly spend 6 hours a day in the company of our glads, tomatoes, herbs, and roses.) This cube features bright grassy greens, floral prints, and even a desk covered in bright gerberas.
• The Cabin Cube: Brings the outdoors indoors with a earthy color scheme and decorations.
• The Golf Cube: For the Michael’s of the world, this design features astroturf on the walls (okay, my girl may have gone one club too far on that one) and a leather golf bag serves as a trash can.

There’s also a CEO cube, a hip hop cube, a glam cube, a safari cube, and others. The whole idea is to surround yourself with things that make you feel good.

The author gives the following advice for decorating your workspace:

1. Get wallpaper to perk up your walls.

2. Don’t forget the floor - add a great throw rug or two.

3. The beauty’ s in the details. For example, if you’re a rock fan (much love), you can rock your work world with a poster or two (The All-American Rejects look amazing on the wall), a hot little mousepad, a couple of Rolling Stones (the mag, not the group), etc.

And don’t forget to match your computer’s wallpaper to your theme. In our home office - our theme pays homage to all the amazing places we’ve ever lived. We’re surrounded by Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas - each in one way or another. We even have a few of the license plates from some of the states. The wallpapers on the computers switch up between dolphins, whales, pelicans, horses, sunflowers, farm scenes, rivers, oceans, lakes, cardinals, bison, etc.

Whatever you do, have fun with it. Life needs more fun thrown into it!

Speaking of fun (only NOT) - if you experienced any trouble with this blog lately, if it acted up in any way, many apologies. We’ve been switching servers which proved to be the equivalent of having a root canal and tooth extraction. At once. Without numb gums. E-mails were lost, comments disappeared, updates vanished.

At any rate, if you experienced trouble, we’re sorry. We’re up and going again, and we’re hopeful that our sanity will return one day. We’re aiming for August.