The designer in me ...

... has been begging to be let out over the past few months, however I have some major road blocks in the way.

1. I live in a rented house and we are not even allowed to put any extra picture hooks up without permission
2. I live with my parents and share a bedroom with my sister (no living space just for me)
3. I am trying to finish my CPA and have to study for my final exam.

I have been interested in interior decoration and design since I was a teen and planned the layout for a couple of rooms in the house my parents used to own, using scale drawings of the room and furniture.

I planned to follow that career path until I discovered that most designers were rather 'strange' in an arty way and I quit studying art at school. Even then I kept looking at books and magazines until I was just too busy with work and study.

While at uni I worked as a bookkeeper/office manager/receptionist/personal assistant (Girl Friday) for an interior designer and loved it when she asked for my input (small as it was) on some of the jobs that she was doing.

But now that I'm nearly through my CPA studies the designer in me is pushing forward and begging to be noticed.

The extent of my designer out-pouring has been working on some solutions for my constantly increasing library of books, DVDs and CDs; and trying to find storage solutions for the stuff that I have been accumulating in relation to craft and general life.

It's probably also why I have been inspired by sites such as Ikea Hacker (I'm so glad I found them through Blogs of Note or I may never have found them). Not that I've done any Ikea Hacks myself, but the inspiration is there.

And then I recently spent a Saturday actually at Ikea in Melbourne and I also went to the Melbourne At Home expo. My poor sisterchick was dragged to both of these (Ikea was no problem, but I did practically drag her around the expo when I could get her away from the Nintendo stand).

And so the creative juices have started flowing once again, and the local library (not my personal one) has been getting a lot of business as I start to read about things once more and get some ideas.

Oh, and just for the record, I think there is too much in the brown range of colours being used in current trends. Come on, it's the colour of dirt, tree trunks and ... . Whatever happened to green, yellow, red, blue, etc.

In case you are wondering, as far as my books go, I now have a small DIY bookshelf ($25 at the Reject Shop) sitting on one corner of my desk at home because that's the only place it would fit. My other bookshelf is not overflowing as much as it was, and the new one is filling up fast.