Working with a White Canvas

Moving into a white space every year I return to school is always an enticing and fun experience for me. There are few things I like better about college than to be able to express myself through my dorm room. The school year is a great time for a fresh start, a clean slate, and so is my living space! This year I am living in an apartment with three other girls, so there is much more white space to fiddle around with, as well as other opinions to consider at least in the public spaces, although this shouldn't be too difficult as we seem to have relatively similar tastes. 

My room is not finished yet -- there are more things I want to do with the walls and the decor, but it is off to a great start, and I think what I have up will do for now until I find a few more works of art and quotes to add to my collection. This year I put up a lot of the postcards and artwork I collected during my studies abroad in Europe and the British Isles. I have found it often is very hard to remember that I even went to Austria -- it is so removed from anything else that I have ever experienced, that it almost feels like another world altogether. I can certainly relate what the Pevensie children in The Chronicles of Narnia felt like when they return from Aslan's magical land to reality. I do not think that this is a bad thing. There is a need to remember that it happened, but there is also a need to look forward, to look ahead to what else God has in store for  you. It was a beautiful experience to study abroad in Austria, but there are more to be had and there is beauty to be found in so many places, persons, and things. The world can be a blank canvas, a white dorm room, but if you see it through the correct lens (with a Catholic perspective, seeing the beauty and light of grace, seeing everything as God sees it), there is so much color, beauty, and light to be seen! 

So here's a quick look at my room and what I'm doing with the place. More photos of the rest of our "bachelorette" pad are forthcoming! 

My desk!

Travel photos and postcards and my nerdy organ calender...

My makeshift closet!

Some of my favorite things in my room... Hopefully they'll help me study!

My funky glitter lamp and my Mozart bust from Vienna.

More Austrian adventure treasures in my holy corner...

Here's my lov-erly wall! So artsy and purdy...