My student space

As a student living on campus, I am given a small amount of space with limited options to change anything. These are the pictures I took on the day of arrival.
If I ever met the persons responsible for picking out those curtains...let's just say I would see it as my duty to tell them the truth.

Being independent is great, but a part of me wished I was 19 again, having my parents drive all my stuff to uni. Instead, I left Norway with two suitcases, and arrived in London late at night. I didn't have any food, not a single cup, and no towel. The next day after having dried myself with a t-shirt, I hurried to buy the most urgent things, and after a while my room sort of looked like this:

  That's when it's time to sharpen up and turn your room around! Being a student is no excuse! So I went to IKEA. The funny thing about IKEA is that you don't just go to IKEA. You come home and IKEA still has you working out:

(On the other hand this is why IKEA is able to keep their prices low. If you don't want to assemble it yourself, there are plenty of stores that will do that for you. But you have to pay the price!)
Suddenly the clutter was gone, but so was I. It felt a bit too sterile.

So I decided to put some love in the process and now it's starting to look like home.

 

As you can see, a number of things have changed (luckily!):

1. I got rid of the ugly curtains and bought some perfectly normal ones in creme. Easy fix! 
2.  That blue office chair had to go. I bought Tobias because he's in see-through plastic and looks good with Ludde sheepskin. Residential Services looked at me kind of funny when I came to return the chair... "I bought a different chair" I explained. "What kind of chair, what's wrong with this one?" they asked. "There's nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it's not pretty," I replied. And now they think I'm to vain for my own good, but we know better, don't we?
3. It takes time to fill a pin-board properly, so I put a fabric over it to tone down the color of all the wooden furniture.. Then I started pinning to add some much needed color.
4. I bought my own lamp, comfy pillows, and a furry bed spread.
5. I needed my shelf space, so the frame is pretty much all I have that doesn't have a function other than to look pretty. The purple Liberty bag is what I use to bring some color instead of a purple object I can't use (who would have guessed I have all my workout equipment in that bag!?).

If you are or have been a student, what did you do to make your limited space look nicer?

XOXO Kristine