sprucing up the nook

slowly but surely i'm trying to make my house feel more like home and less like an apartment. living in cookie cutter cubicles for ten years sort gives a person that rootless, transient feeling, and i'm trying to divest myself of that. it's hard for me. i don't know why.

so i decided to start putting down real roots a little bit at a time. my little reading nook seemed like a good place to start. mostly because it's small and therefore manageable. and it doesn't require new furniture or a lot of rearranging. basically all i had to do was add some artwork for the walls and switch out the old, non-working lamp for one that works. this is what it looked like before:

 and after:

this is also my little "showcase" corner for artwork not done by myself. okay, a few of them are mine but the big painting my husband did, and the cool stencil that you can't really see was a birthday present from justin nelson, whose flickr photostream you should go look at right now if you haven't already. also there's something that i, ahem, don't tell anyone, just printed out on regular printer paper. i figure it will have to do till i can afford a legit copy.

oh, and look! another birthday present i got from my friend esther--she made me this rad bible cover with trees on it. i love it. have i ever mentioned how absolutely fabulous it is to receive handmade things from other fellow crafty people? well, it is. more so because i know exactly how much time and effort it takes to make things rather than just go out and buy them. 

anyway, it probably seems like such a small thing to be happy about, but oh well. it's these little things that make me feel like maybe, just maybe, i'll be here for awhile. and that's a nice feeling indeed.