so i kind of redid sam's office while he was away
so
all right guys hello hello and welcome back to the channel and actually welcome to sam's office
i've been working on a little project these past few months so actually sam traveled over to new
brunswick this summer to spend some time with his parents and i followed shortly after but i
probably had about a month of time before flying out there where i decided to redecorate the whole
apartment and in today's video i'm just going to be showing you sam's office so if you enjoy this
video let me know in the comments and maybe i'll show you what i did to the bedroom and the kitchen
but basically sam really needed an office he really needed a work space because he
had been working out of her kitchen table and it wasn't a comfortable work space because he
was basically just sitting on this wooden chair at an awkward height so yeah he needed a desk
he needed a chair he needed some space that wasn't cluttered so i took it upon myself to create
this lovely haven what do you guys think i'm gonna give you a tour tell you what i
did talk about some of the products some of the artwork and the stories behind them so
i hope you enjoy this random video it's not travel but you know we haven't been traveling a whole lot
this year we've actually been spending a lot of time at home so i figured we may as well have a
comfortable space since we are turning into indoor creatures i hope you enjoy the video
all right so this right here is what we are trying to build the alex
so as i mentioned before all of this sam was working out of her kitchen table after shopping
around online i settled on this customizable desk from ikea the drawer units are called alex and i
got them in this deep midnight blue but they also have them in white beige and black brown
i like the idea of drawers to store all the hard drives usbs cables bits and bobs paperwork and
random things that go into making videos things feel far more organized now that all these random
items aren't strewn across the whole kitchen so for the table top i chose guertin which is beach
i was originally looking at the hilver which is bamboo but when i saw them in person at the store
the curtain was thicker and it looked a lot more sturdier and longer and wider so i figured why not
have a bigger desk and a bigger workspace in general my dad helped me put an oil finish to
seal the wood so this will prevent rings from forming on the wood when you set down a drink
like coffee water a glass of wine as sam does we did three coats but we went for a very light and
natural color so the chair was also from ikea and let me just tell you shopping for a chair is very
hard sam is happy with it but he was working on a hard wooden chair before that it's not an
ergonomic chair but it is an improvement this one is called the mill burget and it's a swivel chair
that also comes in white the reviews were pretty good but if you've ever sat in an ergonomic chair
then you're ruined for anything else so sam and i don't normally do gifts for birthdays holidays
or anything like that but while i was shopping online for myself i came across something that
just had his name written all over it i got him a man candle yes a man candle so this right here
is called the black absinthe and if you know sam you know that he is obsessed with licorice and
not just any type of licorice it has to be like that nasty salty dark licorice that you can get in
places like finland and other nordic countries and baltic countries so yeah i got this one which has
a nice fennel and orange it smells it smells okay i know he loves the smell it's really not my scent
but this is a gift for him so yeah if you're looking for a man candle for your man
um these are from natura soy and they have some really cool scents let me just read you the names
because i thought some of these sounded super interesting so they have cedarwood and tobacco
spiced rum vanilla bourbon wood smoke and gin cigar leaf and brandy so yeah they're pretty
cool so i wanted to create a gallery wall to kind of show off some of the pieces that we've acquired
over the course of our travels i purposely went with some blues and blacks to kind of tie things
together with the desk so let's look at the artwork i chose i just dropped the camera on the
floor focus please tell me you can still focus oh man oh man shoot are you really dead camera
i think it survived i think it survived that fall there we go okay today is the day we finally
finish off this project that i started months ago it was summer time it was months ago we are going
to do the gallery wall on top of sam's desk that is his little office voila he has been using it
so i didn't film the surprise i didn't film the unveil when he saw his office for the first time
but it wasn't even finished so we're gonna make it look all pretty and then show it to him again
so yeah i've gathered all the artwork i want to use it's a mixture of sketches prints
photos so yeah we're gonna do that right now all that he has above his desk is a
painting that one of my sisters did at one of those wine and paint evenings
like where you go with friends sip some wine and you all paint anyway also as a little tip
for anyone who's redecorating in their home michaels has online coupons like discounts so
you can just print the coupon at home or have it on your on your smartphone and yeah like sometimes
they have 40 off today it was 30 off unfortunately this one was already discounted so i couldn't get
an extra discount i always make sure to show up at that store with a coupon the way to do it um
this is so hard when it's just one
person
okay it is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination not everything lines up but you know
what i dare say it looks pretty good and i don't think sam's really gonna notice if a picture frame
is like half a centimeter off so there you have it so this piece right here we picked up on vancouver
island in 2019 when we did a two-week road trip um just visiting sam's home island this is a killer
whale design done by richard shorty who is a self-taught artist originally from yukon who later
moved down to vancouver so this piece reminds me of all the totem poles and potlatch art that
we saw at the umista cultural center in alert bay so i thought it would make a really nice souvenir
so we actually purchased it at the airport in victoria so yeah that's the story behind that
piece then this other one right here is a maritime landscape and it was a wedding gift from sam's
aunt and uncle it's titled three houses and it's a scene from bayshore new brunswick and sam's
parents now live in new brunswick so we go there every year sometimes once a year sometimes twice
a year so it's kind of like sam's second home so i thought it'd be nice to have a little piece of
new brunswick there a little piece of the seaside oh and the painting is by lynn wigginton so i also
developed one of our wedding photos to put up on the wall i got it done in black and white that is
from when we got married in a greenhouse it was a very small ceremony super relaxed i i wasn't
nervous i was surprised that i wasn't nervous that day so yeah i've put that up right there i think
it's a really cute picture and yeah just happy memories for sam to look back on to think what
a lucky man am i there's your wife so this wheel print right here i bought through the prints for
wildlife fundraiser that's when a whole bunch of photographers came together this year and they
donated prints to raise funds for african parks which is a non-profit conservation organization
and i was scrolling through all the photos available when i came across this one and it
just spoke to me it's it's so beautiful i believe it was actually taken in tonga um but it just
made me think of the whales in british columbia even though i didn't get to see whales in person
we weren't quite lucky enough but that's kind of what it reminds me of and i think it's just such a
beautiful moment that was captured like it looks like the whale is dancing and then you have the
deepness of that water in the midnight blue and it just looks like the perfect moment
frozen in time with like the fin over its body so yeah that's kind of the story behind that photo
and the artist is named steve woods if you want to look him up on instagram okay and then right
behind me here we have two cat prints these we got in south africa in 2015 when we went on
safari after finishing teachers college that was a pretty cool trip because we basically woke up
on christmas morning and we found these incredible flights it was an error fair actually it was like
300 to fly from new york city to johannesburg so we booked it on the spot and the airline um
honored the mistake fair so yeah once we graduated we ended up flying down to south africa and we did
this really cool safari in kruger national park and our guide his name was lloyd he was a sketch
artist and he had this whole portfolio with prints of his different sketches so we ended up getting
four and we've put up two of those sam said he wanted the caps because he's a cat person so yeah
that's the story behind those two sketches so i also put up one of our youtube awards we actually
have two now one for english channel and one for our spanish channel i couldn't find the second one
it's probably stored away in a box somewhere but that is the one for our spanish channel so if you
actually look at it closely um we decided to put our our family's names on it because the spanish
channel has really been a team effort with both my parents really helping us make the spanish videos
so yeah their names are on it and the dog's name is also on it because he's kind of the star of
the show in some videos and i forgot to tell you guys about one more piece here on the gallery wall
it's this one this is sam's name written in korean and we got it on one of our many trips to korea
apparently this was in 2015 and we've been there a few times since we taught there and it's always
a really fun time so yeah okay now let's talk about plants i wanted to bring a little bit of
nature into this apartment um so my mom got me my first plant this is a snake plant i now have three
of these kind of scattered around the apartment and apparently they're really good air purifiers
so that's one of the reasons i wanted this lovely little plant so we have a bit of green i just have
to remember to water it but it's still alive thus far it's been good and it's been a few weeks now
and then i chose a rug that was already in the home i thought it kind of matched the color of
the desk a bit because it's got these deep blues and like dark teals so i thought it tied it all
together it's not super modern um but i think it kind of fits it kind of works with the space so
yeah i think i've now shown you the whole office so we're gonna get sam's reaction let me warn
you he's already seen his office because it's just taken me forever to put together so let's recreate
his reaction of when he first got back from new brunswick and saw this place for the first time
hello there samuel hey guys hello you've grown a beard i've grown a beard and
i've also grown a work desk too thanks audrey that was such a cool idea i mean
we do spend a lot of time now at home in canada in between trips we're not nomadic
anymore we used to spend more time on the road than we did any in any one place and even before
um the pandemic we were starting to slow down our travels a little bit and it's just so nice to have
a work desk a proper work desk i almost feel like uh i i'm doing a real job you know a little bit of
work in here and there now it's more official that you're not working out of the kitchen yeah i mean
we were just literally if you look over there it's messy i'm not showing you you're not showing that
well anyways yeah we basically just had this computer which i've had for less than a year put
it on the uh on on the kitchen table and the thing that i found the most frustrating about being at
the kitchen table was number one it wasn't the right height so it was just like kind of like
cramping my shoulders having to to raise my hands like that and the second thing too is that the the
the kitchen um chairs are not meant for sitting on for hours on end whereas having like a something
like this it's just perfect i get like the what do you call it the lumbar support the neck support
just so nice and i've actually found that since i have a like more of an official space to work at
that i've been more productive i spend less time uh you know surfing the internet as they say or
wasting time on social media and youtube too so that's it for the grand reveal of a grand tour
of sam's home office we hope you guys enjoyed it maybe we'll have a few more episodes for you
on the bedroom makeover the chicken the chicken the kitchen makeover there's no chicken in there
um so yeah if you enjoyed the video don't forget to give it a like we invite you to
subscribe to the channel and we'll see you soon with more adventures at home and on the road bye
so