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“Share the Joy” Office Makeover: The Game Plan

Do Good on a Grand Scale
Image courtesy of Real {Cheap} Housewives of Texas

“Do good on a grand scale.”

Those words stuck with me after hearing the closing address at Haven Blog Conference this summer, delivered by Bob Johnson from Habitat for Humanity. As much as I receive deep satisfaction from making our house a home, I appreciated his charge to use our skills and resources as DIY bloggers to make a difference beyond the walls of our home. To bless others. To be a force for positive change in our communities. And to think big.

So, when I received an email from another Central Florida Blogger, Sarah from While They Snooze, with an invitation to “do good on a grand scale” right here in our community, I leapt at the opportunity. And so did two other bloggers from our area: Katie from Sew Woodsy and Christine from First Home Love Life!

Share the Joy

The opportunity was provided by World Market as part of their “Share the Joy” campaign. Have you heard of it? Well, regardless, you know I’m gonna tell ya about it!

World Market wants to give back through you and me. So, for every week from November 8th through December 6th, they are giving away a $5,000 American Express Gift Card plus $5,000 for a charity of your choice. So, yeah, everyone wins! To enter the sweepstakes, you just need to become a fan of World Market on Facebook and click here.

Dear reader, what charity would you want to help out with that prize money?

"Share the Joy" Sweepstakes! by World Market

Operation Office Makeover

So, let me give y’all the run-down of the special service project we undertook under Sarah’s leadership and World Market’s sponsorship this past week.

Sarah has a soft-spot in her heart for local foster homes, as she tutored at one in her high school days. So, after doing some research, she reached out to the Central Florida Children’s Home, a faith-based community that has been providing its services to the community for the past 40 years and runs solely on donations and volunteers. In conversations with the staff at the Children’s Home, we learned that the home where the 15 foster children live along with the Executive Director and his wife has recently been revamped; however, the small building that housed their office was in dire need of a makeover!

Photographic evidence:

The Office in Need of Renovation - - Before

When talking to Hiram, the Executive Director, he said to me,

“Working with the kids–that’s the easy part. It’s the work that happens here in the office that is really tough.”

That work entails a lot of paperwork, fundraising efforts, meeting with families of potential foster children. So, of course, we were really excited about the opportunity to give this very important office space a full makeover to help give it more function (and beauty).  Our hope was that this transformation would help make that “tough” work a little bit easier.

Their major needs were for a conference table and two separate desk areas since both Hiram and his sweet-as-pie secretary Natalie were sharing the same desk. The space was also rather dark, so we knew we needed to incorporate more lighting. As you can tell from the photos, they also needed more storage as there were stacks of papers everywhere.

We had our mission. Now, we needed to gather supplies!

Shopping Spreeee!

Sarah and Christine took World Market by storm one Sunday afternoon and managed to nab some really beautiful furniture pieces and decor items to help give this office space a total top-to-bottom makeover. Sarah whipped up a really snazzy inspiration board with their finds…as well as the color schemes we decided to go with. Whad’ya think?

Share the Joy Inspiration Board

1- SOURAV DINING TABLE / 2- COCOA PAIGE ROUND BACK DINING CHAIRS / 3- PAKSHI BIRD OF PARADISE CURTAIN / 4-VERONA BUFFET / WALL COLOR: LIGHT FRENCH GRAY BY BEHR / ACCENT COLOR: GULF WINDS BY BEHR / 5- MAHOGANY KONRAD DESK / 6- VERONA TWO-SHELF BOOKSHELF / 7- ZANE PEDESTAL TABLES

Stepping Up to the Plate

In addition to the items from World Market, we knew we would need more supplies to help us do the job right. So, we reached out to a few brands to offer some additional support with donations, and they totally rose to the occasion! So, I just want to give a shout-out and thanks to the following:

Without the additional help from all of these sponsors, we could not have truly completed this project. It really was a team effort. Thanks a bunch, everyone!

Stay Tuned….

Thursday evening, I’ll be back with Part II of our “Share the Joy” Office Makeover, complete with photos of us gettin’ sweaty for a good cause and those awesome “after” photos I know you’re anxious to see! (Aren’t you glad I’m not making you wait more than 24 hours?) And I even have a video clip of the Hiram’s reaction to seeing the space after its transformation, and trust me…you don’t want to miss it.

To tide you over, here’s a sneak peek of one of my favorite projects we tackled: a stenciled accent wall!

Stenciling as part of our "Share the Joy" service project at the Central Florida Children's Home Office!

Disclaimer: I am not required to blog about this. I just wanted to share more about this worthwhile project I was privileged to be a part of. As always, all opinions are my own.

{Sometimes, I link up at these parties.}

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10 Comments

  1. What a lovely thing to do! You never mentioned this so it was a joy to see here today. Can’t wait to see the finished reveal. Wish I could have been there to help you. I don’t think I could do this on my own, but I should could follow your directions! You and the others who helped get lots of my admiration and gratefulness!

  2. Lauren, you are such an incredible person! I love that you and the other three ladies are doing something that is so totally in the spirit of the holidays, and I cannot WAIT to see all the changes y’all made!

  3. Great post Lauren! You really captured what we were trying to achieve. Thank you so much for jumping in head first and working your booty off. Can’t wait to share the big reveal too! 🙂

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