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During a burst of nervous energy I worked on my "new desk" area a bit on Monday night.  I am so enjoying the extra space and that will come in handy in the upcoming months as I study some continuing education classes for my insurance license.  Environment is key for comfortable study.

You can see the inspector general is in attendance to make sure all is in order.

I put up that shelf on Monday night.  It is an old one we had up in our bedroom at one time and I've always pictured a shelf above my desk area so I could personalize the space a bit more.  The large picture is one my parents gave me the Christmas we first moved into this house (21 years ago!).  It was painted by a friend and neighbor of theirs.  She was a talented water color artist.

I like the green colors in the big picture, but I really prefer this smaller water color, by the same artist,  that I hung above the larger peice.

Three Barrels, by Evelyn Wood

The artist's name is Evelyn Wood and I have another water color of hers and an oil.  Her specialty was painting scenes around Honeymoon Island and Caladisi Island in the Dunedin/Clearwater area of Florida.

On the right side of the desk I have a 60's era lamp that used to be in my father's den.  It has a nice burlap shade that I'm thinking of adding some stenciling to just as I saw in a recent post of the famous Miss Mustard Seed.

Just to the left of the lamp on the shelf is a shadow box that I made last fall and wrote about in a post entitled, Roots. Click on it if you are interested in a bit of my family history or just want to see some neat old things.

Next to the shadow box I have a picture of my family, meaning my parents, my brothers and myself.  Taken the last time we were all together.  Next to that is a picture of my dad and my son, The Writer, feeding seagulls at Honeymoon Island, Dunedin in December of 1986. Beside the picture is a soapstone carving my father and I watched being carved by the artist at the 1967 Centennial Celebration in Montreal, Canada.

I even have the picture my dad took of the young eskimo artist carving this seabird.

On the left of the shelf is a picture of my daughter, The Maven climbing up on one of the chairs that graced my dad's den.  I've started calling them my "Don Draper chairs" since the advent of Mad Men.  More importantly, The Maven is seen at about 18 months with our beloved cat, Cheetah.  The picture to the right of my daughter's is yours-truly at about the age of one with our family cat at the time, Socks.  I had given this side-by-side picture comparison to my mother for mother's day one year.  And she gave me the lovely little Russian nesting doll that she bought while visiting Russia with my father.

The last item on the shelf is a picture of The Fantastic Four that was taken in Mexico during a cruise excursion.  This is a horrible shot of it, but you get the idea of how much fun we had that day in July 2006.

So, I just need to find the perfect old, wooden desk chair and my area will be complete. 

Meanwhile, I'm not sure if Sadie's going to be much help keeping me awake while I study these CE courses.

Or is she just laughing at me?

P.S. WHAT is going on with the picture loading on blogger?  Am I the only one experiencing a less efficient system the past week?  Aggravating...