As you guys know, I'm a career gal. While I do love spending my time blogging about interior design and smooching on my cute babies, I also enjoy practicing real estate law. I'm lucky to have a part-time work schedule (about 25-30 hours per week) and I work at least 50% of the time from home. So a good home office is mucho importanto to me. That's why I shared with you guys here about my office refresh plans. The main objectives? New rug. New desk chair. Update art. Reorganize. And I'm proud to say that I can check, check, check and check that list off!

Let's start with the chair. The chair. All the heart eyes. I've been pining after this chair for years now, so it was about time I finally bit the bullet and purchased it. I will admit that it's not quite as comfortable as I had imagined (I think I was searching for rainbows and puffy cloud seats since I had built up the chair to that caliber in my head) but it is still very comfortable for long work days. And I can't even begin to tell you how much I love looking at it, for what that's worth! Those wooden legs are amazing.

I pulled this classic rug in from our living room (since I replaced it with my new double layered jute and shag rugs!) and absolutely love it with the graphic herringbone print chair.  The colors are subdued enough that they feel muted in the room, which is just what I wanted. We also pulled in our Expedit which is a hot mess and therefore is not pictured but has quickly become an amazing place for me to store all of my crafty junk and some kiddo toys. We also reorganized the office by moving the craft table (otherwise known as a butcher block) back to it's old spot as pictured here. It looks that neat and tidy today, promise. (side eye)

Finally, let's focus on the creme de la creme of the room: the new art. I can't even begin to tell you how obsessed I am with this new piece. The large scale print (and the ridiculously amazing whitewashed herringbone frame) is from Minted- their art shop is just blowing me away lately. This is Kristi Kohut's "Beauty Inside" print and... I... just... love... it. Like, a lot. I could (and do) stare at it all day long. It's just breathtaking. It was exactly what I needed to bring this space up a notch (or three).

Since I've been successfully working from home for almost two years now, I thought I'd share some of my favorite tips to being a great work-at-homer.

Keep your workspace separate from the rest of your house. Even if you don't have a room to dedicate as your home office, make sure you have a home office space. A separate desk, a separate table or even a separate TV tray. Whatever it takes, you need to keep your work things away from the rest of your at-home world. It brings clarity in terms of when it's time to work (at the separate space) and when it's time to turn it off (when you're in the family space).

Stay organized with your time. It is soooo easy to step away just to throw one more load of laundry in... and run the dishwasher... oh and Tucker needs to be walked... which reminds me to finish the thank you notes before the mailman comes... and I really need to hose down the porch furniture... but first let me make a quick run to Target... yeah, then it's 5 PM and you got nothing done! Make sure you set blocks of your time for work and for breaks so you can get things done around the house.

Keep yourself equipped. Pretty much, Staples needs to become your BFF. Make sure you have everything you need to run a successful office, just like you would out of the home. I invested in this printer over a year ago and it changed my work-at-home world. I review a lot of long documents, so the scanner and double-sided printer makes things much easier to keep up with when I'm out of the office. It's not the prettiest thing in the world (although it's sitting on David's grandmother's antique sewing cabinet, which I love!) but I don't know how I'd function without it! I also couldn't live without my Mac and programs like Adobe for combining scanned closing documents and that kind of thing. So clutch.

Don't be afraid to get childcare help. While everyone's situation is certainly different, I did want to point out that my kids are not home with me (most of the time) during the day when I'm working from home. A lot of people think that working from home means the kids can stay home with me all day. And while that would be great, nothing would get done. I'd feel guilty about ignoring the kids while I tried to work and guilty about not focusing wholly on my work. Plus, I'm pretty sure the folks I work with don't want to hear Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on in the background while we're having a conference call. Just a thought. So the kids go to school on my work days and stay at home on my weekdays off! For what it's worth, a huge key to my successful work-at-home career is to have childcare during my working hours. 

Do you have any thoughts or tips on working from home? I'd love to hear them!

Thanks to Minted for providing the art shown in this post.