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