upgraded office space!

This post originally appeared on the Laura Kelly Photography blog, 

but since it's a part of the home tour, you'll find it here as well!

Some of you will remember this post, where I shared a few photos of the temporary "mom-office" I had set up in the kids' playroom on the second floor. At the time I wrote it, Jillian was still a baby and Cooper was only in school two days a week. 

So much has changed since then! 

Nowadays, after the 8:30am drop-off I come home and set up camp in my office for the day, leaving only for shoots, lunch dates with my girlfriends, and the occasional trip to the grocery store. I am so pumped to have recently upgraded my mom office to a full blown worker's heaven on the main floor. It was a major transformation from the taupe builder's paint room we used only for storage. Seriously, I would show you a before photo, but it's totally a scene from Hoarders. 

I waited for the sunshine to pour in before taking some photos of this room to share as part of the Kelly Family Home Tour -- hope you enjoy! 

I was inspired by a recent shoot with Melanie from Launch Your Space in picking out this perfectly modern desk lamp!

There's still a bit of builder's paint left in the house, but from this view you can see the foyer in the middle, with a hint of my client meeting space on the far side. 

Things that are usually on this desk but were swept aside for the mini shoot:

- a lukewarm mug of coffee

- a notebook and 2 sharpies

- my book club book

- a stack of memory cards

Folders, more folders, and endless spiral bound notebooks. I take notes constantly while I work, whether for little to-do lists, sketches of new promo material I want to design, or a list of things that fire me up. 

This little corner is so cute and I love how these Home Sense shelves are so different and yet work together! Y'all know I lit these candles for the first time for these photos. 

Okay. The filing cabinet. I shared a photo of this beaut on my Instagram last week and my inbox exploded with "HOW DO I DO THIS?" messages! So apparently there are a few of you out there with ugly black filing cabinets that could use a facelift. Here are my tips for painting a filing cabinet:

1. Take off the hardware and give it a nice spritz of silver spray paint. 

2. Scratch it up as much as you can, and then wash off all the black/grey/beige dust that comes off. 

3. Only spray the cabinet indoors if you want to leave an endless trail of turquoise dust on every single surface. For real, I'm such a poor planner when it comes to my DIY tasks, I literally painted this cabinet INSIDE the office. 

4. I used spray paint that I had in the basement from Cooper's dinosaur birthday party, but totally didn't have any idea just how much spray paint it would take! It took me 3 coats (lighter coats make for no drips!) and 3 cans. 

5. Don't sweat the small stuff, and leave the back of the cabinet unpainted if no one's ever gonna see it ;) Why make life harder than it has to be?

With this angle from the french doors you can see the elliptical on the right. I'm so pleased that it fit behind the door, and I absolutely love being able to workout and watch Real Housewives while my edits are exporting. 

If you can't already tell, I'm so smitten with the space and can't wait for all the magical work that will take place in here this Summer and for years to come <3