Me and My Monkeys

By Kcaseysmith @karencaseysmith

When I’m not out shooting with my camera, this is where I do most of my work. My desk is a drafting table that I had, and worked at, long before I ever had a computer, back when I mostly did drawing, lettering and painting. I still love working here. A desk like this gives me so much flexibility.

My chair has been around as long as the table. The fabric had worn through, so it was definitely past time to recover it. I just finished it yesterday. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and the chair is even more comfortable than before since I added extra padding. Yay!

Office - new upholstery for my chair

Check out the new upholstery on my drafting chair! The nice lady at the fabric store said, ‘now, this is a fun fabric.’ The monkeys make me smile, and/or laugh, each time I see them so far. I think this is very much in keeping with my theme for this year, which is “lighten up.”  Lighten up says to me to be more playful, not to take things (including myself) too seriously, let as much light shine as I can, and allow things to unfold in joyful and easy ways. I decided that since I already know how to make things challenging, I’d like to see the other side.

I’m not sure how significant monkeys are for me, and I’m not a fan of everything that has a monkey on it, but I certainly do have a few around me. My favorite explanation of the teaching that Monkey offers, and one that contains quite a lot that resonates with me, is on Cathy Ginter’s Animal Totems page.  If you have a certain animal, bird, or insect, showing up in your life, take a look and see if what she says has meaning for you, or offers some insight.

Here are a couple of extra pictures so you can see how cute the monkey fabric is! If you click these images, you’ll get a larger view of them.

Office chair - closer look

Office chair - even closer look