a recipe, upgrade, and makeover

On my summer bucket list I mentioned trying new recipes. Earlier this week I made tacos in an iron skillet. I like to call it Taco Pizza. I found the recipe on pinterest [found here] and it was delicious.  Quick and easy too.

Onto the upgrade....which is a small change but a big upgrade. Well, anything is considered a step up from a cardboard box. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Last summer when we moved into our condo we hung our tv on the wall. So we didn't need our TV stand. We stuck our old TV stand in the small nook beside the TV to hold the DVD played and cable box. It didn't fit right and actually was very awkward looking. But we lived it....Then, came Christmas when we rearranged some furniture and moved the TV stand elsewhere. Long story short, we didn't have anything small enough to hold our DVD player and cable box so we dug out a cardboard box for the meantime.

Well, meantime lasted 6 months. Ekk...how tacky. So this is what it looked like:

Don't mind the other box...JD ordered some shoes. But do you see the ugly cardboard-box-exposed-wire mess?

Here's what it looks like now:
The only thing I bought was the green plant and small silver frame (couldn't resist the $3.50 sale price). Still need to put a picture in it.

But the office (where I just dumped all the books that used to be on this shelf) now looks like this:

Wow. What a mess.

It doesn't usually look this bad but it hasn't really been put together since we moved. I made the desk last summer but everything is else very hodge podge.

Here's the other corner filled with more unpacked boxes.

But don't worry because we're already on Mission Office Makeover. Our goal is to create a guest room/office/video game room in this space. So here's the plan:

• add storage
• add a sleeping space
• hang all of JD's video game art
• add shelves for office storage 
• find a way to organize my desk supplies and all of JD's work supplies (when he works from home overtakes the desk with a lot of paper/books)
• do so in a functional, cohesive, budget-friendly way

Not sure when well be done...hopefully before I go back to work in just about 3 weeks. So sad that summer's almost over.  Stayed tuned.