office space re-do, part two

Now it's time for the fun part! Once we were satisfied with how we wanted the art hung, we (and by "we" I mean "Rob") drilled holes directly through the paper. Then, we ripped down the templates and hung the actual frames. Such an easy and fun way to hang frames this way...

After the photos were hung, then I got to have a lot of fun decorating the office a bit more and styling the desktop. I strongly believe that your workspace needs to be fun and pleasant -- particularly since we spend so much time working!

We bought a few pieces of new art for the office from Etsy:

• All You Need is Love Print from The Love Shop
• Across the Universe Print from The Love Shop
• Canal Print from Laura Amiss Art & Design
• When Will it Stop Print from Laura Amiss Art & Design

office space re-do, part one

For the first few months we lived in Florence, our office space looked like this:

I'll do you all a favor and not provide a close-up photo. Suffice to say those armchairs were all funk and no flair. For a while, I worked from the dining room and Rob worked from the sofa. It's not that we didn't want to create an office nook, it's just that we wanted to take things one step at a time -- and there was so much paperwork/bureaucratic stuff to take care of.

When we finally sat down to plan our space, I had a pretty clear picture of what I wanted it to look like: a handful of art illustrations and photos hung in mismatched frames above a simple modern desk, with a few pops of color. Here's a visual guide to the elements we were looking for...

ikea HELMER, $40 | ikea SNILLE, $23 | ikea NYTTJA, $9.99 | ikea RIBBA, $15 | ikea MELLTORP, $60 | Pantone Espresso set, 30 GBP

Quick Ikea shopping FYI: Our "desk" is actually a dining table from Ikea. We hated all of the actual desk options and were about to leave dejected, when we happened upon this $50 gem in the dining section. It's the perfect length for two people.

Because I wanted the frames hung unevenly, it was essential to plan out the layout before we drilled any holes. The DIY gurus over at Young House Love had just posted about a similar project the week before we tackled ours, so we followed their genius approach.

First, we messed around with the layout by placing the frames on the floor:

Once we found a layout we liked, we made use of old magazines lying around the apartment and made paper templates for each of the frames. Then, I acted as foreman and had Rob hang all of the paper templates on the wall.

We messed around with the height a few times and then left them for a few days -- just to make sure we were happy with the setup.

Stay tuned for part two later today...

Moving to Italy: Our Apartment

Late last week one of my favorite blogs, Desire to Inspire, answered a design dilemma for our apartment in Florence. To check it out, click here!

{photo via desire to inspire}

day 4 of the scouting trip

This has been one heck of a whirlwind trip! But, to simply call it productive would be a huge understatement. We have accomplished everything and more that we came to do, which is not only a great excitement, but also a relief. It takes off a bit of the pressure for the actual move in January!

We used our final day in Florence to take care of a few final errands and to also hike up to Kate's favorite spot in the city, Piazzale Michelangelo. And we do mean UP. It's the spot with the best overall view of the city, but it takes some serious leg power to get there. Here are a few of our favorite shots:

Next, we headed back toward to the city center to eat, grab some gelato and take care of a few more errands. Kate took some photos of the Duomo on the way to the Vodafone store...

We popped into the Vodafone store to check out our options for ADSL, cell phones and internet keys. We'll do an entire separate telecommunications post in the near future, because it's definitely an important (and somewhat confusing) topic.

After buying a few last minute gifts, we walked back to the B&B, took a quick break and then headed out to our last Florence dinner before we return again in January. We have a ton of topic-specific posts for you in the next few weeks (including ones on telecommunications, apartment hunting, apartment contracts, opening bank accounts, traveling with pets, etc), but do hope you enjoy these more fun posts in meantime!

(Confession: this final post from our scouting trip of Florence was written from the comfort of our home office. We got a little lazy on our last day in Florence!)

ciao from florence, day three

(We could dedicate an entire blog to cool Florence doors)

WOW, this day was busy. We're super tired, so this post will be short.

We spent most of the morning wandering around, enjoying some hidden streets and neighborhoods. At Rob's insistance we visited, Il Micio, a shop we had both read about on The Sartorialist. To call this guy a master craftsman is a huge understatement...it was like walking through an art gallery!

Next, we waited out a rainstorm in the one place we knew we'd be safe (OK, that's a lie): Gustapanino. Don't judge us -- this place really has some of the best panini in the city!

After Gusta, we visited a great coffee shop a few doors down. Bob Marely was playing and there were great books to read everywhere. We can't wait to go back to this place.

After coffee we took a break to do some work back at the B&B. Then, we met our rental agent to look again at one of the apartments we saw on the first day here. It's our favorite and we have started the process to rent it -- in Italy, you make a rental offer much like you would to buy a home in the U.S. Hopefully it will all work out! We thought about not writing about it in case it does fall through, but we know from the many future expats we've heard from that our honesty is very helpful...so whether we get it our not, hearing our experiences will help others!

This may or may not be a shot of the street that the apartment is on ;-)