Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:

I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:

I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.

I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.

I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.

On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.

This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.

The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.

On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 

So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.

For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)

Leafy Goodness

Work on the bathroom continues.  Thankfully, it's been operational for a few days now, and we're just waiting for the crew to come back towards the end of this week to finish the cosmetic details (trim, wall texture, paint).

Meanwhile, I thought I'd show off my favorite spot in the house:  the back patio.  It's nothing fancy, it's just relaxing, pretty, and unbelievably comfortable. 

Just enough shade, just enough light, and lots of turquoise and green.

I literally dumped all of my houseplants out here when we moved, since there wasn't enough space near the windows inside.

It was accidental, but the result is a soft, green patio space I LOVE to relax in in the evenings.

Daisy says hi.

I may hang one or two of the plants, just to keep the entire patio from happening on the ground.  Maybe a bell. 

Definitely some string lights. 

Further down the side yard (I promise I wasn't just backing down the property with a camera in hand, lol), it's...less attractive.  

Definitely in need of some hose management.  

Other than that...?  I haven't had a chance to even think about it yet. 

Turn and face the other way, and there's the yard. 

Shaded, green, sheltered, and quiet. 

The backyard is actually shaped like this, which is weird.  

But it's tiny, so, easy to mow.  (I mean, I don't have to mow it, but I imagine it's easy to do). 

The other day it rained, and this little green fox-face appeared in the algae on the wood of the fence near the patio area.  Hee! 

I was worried that my indoor plants wouldn't survive the transition to the patio, but not only have they all come through like champs, some are even thriving out there - including this wee Jade plant, which came completely out of its pot and was kicking around the floor of my car all afternoon, and which I just shoved back into the dirt with my thumb.  Just a few days later, and it's totally happy.  Yay! 

That's all the patio I've got for now; I'll be back soon with house pics, and maybe updates to the patio.  See ya! 

Windowz & An Art

I'm hard at work sprucing up baseboards, doors, door trim, and doorknobs, all around the house.  I have no pics for you, because...baseboards, really?  Not exactly newsworthy. 

However, I took a moment over the weekend to finally get my sand collection together, which sounds like a weird euphemism, but is, in fact, about an actual sand collection: 

Lighting in here is terrible, sorry for the picture quality.  There's not much to decorate in the master bathroom's Poop Cave, but there was enough wall space for a couple of favorite Impressionists (Monet's Impression Sunrise; Van Gogh's Seascape near les Saintes Maries de la Mer;  as well as a small oil painting of a lighthouse on a cliff painted by none other than my roommate, back when she was in high school).  

The plants hanging up there are a Senecio ("String of Bananas") and some sort of weird fern I found at Blowe's with no label.  Both puny-looking and in desperate need of more water and less cold (like me in the winter).  

I don't know why I collect sand, that's just the way it is.  Initially I collected it every-sandy-where I went, to fill my incense burners;  but somewhere along the way I developed a love of just collecting sand in general.  Sort of an, "I buried my feet in this stuff, remember?"  (except for the sand people bring to me. I'm that friend who answers, "I'm going to Tahiti, want any souvenirs?" with BRING ME SAND!!!)  

Left to right:  

1. Hawaii, brought to me by a friend from her vacation.

2.  Costa Rica, also friend/vacation

3.  Cannon Beach, Oregon, from my trip there last August.

4.  Black sand from Hawaii, which is illegal to collect but is sold in these tiny bottles there. Friend/ vacation.

5.  Cozumel, Mexico, from my Caribbean cruise in 2012.   

# 1 and 5 need better jars, but, I like having them all displayed, finally.  There are two more around here somewhere, I think, I just don't know where.  

It's not much, but it pleases me. 

Bonus stuff: I made an art! 

I like to draw and paint, as you may have noticed in my last post when I made a little laptop table to draw on. I mostly just diddle around with coloring or sketching flowers and things, but I also like to copy some of my favorite paintings for practice and to explore translating images from one medium to another.  

This is a colored pencil version I did of Van Gogh's The Olive Trees  It was SO much fun. 

I measured completely wrong and had to tack on an extra page to get the paper sized right - it was either that or erase a LOT of work, which I wasn't willing to do, hehe.  Fun times. 

When next we meet, I hope to have some actual progress on the craft room to show you.  Let's see if I actually do. 

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They All Rolled Over and One Fell Out

Seven years is a pretty good run for a bed.  Especially a wooden bed that you built yourself, when you'd never built more than a simple shelf before.  Sadly, my long-beloved bed finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, and I've been sleeping at an angle ever since, due to the way in which it sort of half-collapsed.
Oops.

I'd been looking for the perfect metal bed as a replacement, and I really wanted the SVELVIK from Ikea.  However, (as with 90% of the things I lust after at Ikea), I waited too long and the SVELVIK had been discontinued by the time I showed up ready to buy one.
Oops.

Target, and the internet to the rescue!   It isn't exactly the SVELVIK, but it'll do nicely - and does.  This went together easily and relatively quickly.  It's nice and solid, and I like the finish on it.  Best of all, it's inexpensive - and it was even 30% off last week when I ordered it.

I've been playing with the bay box window in the bedroom, too:  more plants, fewer laundry baskets on the windowsill.

Bonus:
Ikea's RASKOG cart being a bicycle  workshop cart (with GLIS organizer box in the top).  It's not terribly organized yet;  I just have small things on top, medium-large things in the middle, and BIG things in the bottom (mostly the tarp I put down when I clean the bikes indoors).

Sorry about the weird photo filter. My phone did that and I couldn't be arsed to take a new pic at 6:30am.  :D

The @#$%@#!! Living Room Ceiling

Well, guys, I finally did it.  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling.

I started the ceiling project in 2012 - three years ago - with my then-master bedroom, followed by the dining room, kitchen, hallways, and eventually the guest bath and two small bedrooms as I re-made them a year ago when Sylvan moved in.  By the time that I got to the living room, I was out of steam, out of paint, out of time in which to work, and injured, to boot.  (I'm still injured, but fuck it).

The holiday weekend past gave me a much-needed break from working two jobs and filling every spare second of time with sleep, depression, and sewing projects (my Very Last Commission Ever is going up on the SCA blog shortly - it's a doozy).  What'd I do for Thanksgiving?  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling!  Yay!

Halfway there. Bye-bye, stupid blue ceiling that turned the whole house
into a cave. The paint is [two coats of] a self-priming latex interior which
I mixed to match the other ceilings in the house ("White Clay" by Behr).
The kitchen cabinets are the same color).

The "clean end" of the room (the other end still had paint stuff
all over it).  I love the feeling of height this gives the room.

And I adore this little corner.  Corner windows: check. 
Table fulla plants: check. Dog sleeping under the table:
heehee. 

YAY!

Okay, so, technically there IS still one room I haven't gotten around to yet, ceiling-wise: the master bath.  But I have plans for the entire master suite (which is now a gigantic craft room), and I'm not touching ANYTHING in there until I'm ready to do the whole room (and have time, and money, and my arm's not trying to fall off, and I'm no longer working two jobs, which I still am at present. Ugh).  

Shelly, the Biggest Derp.

P.S.:  Oh!  Idk if you noticed (does anybody even read this horrible blog? Probably not, but it's still fun to do), but I also rearranged all the furniture.  Pics of all very soon, I promise.

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Halloween Highlights

The 2014 Halloween party is dead. Long live the 2014 Halloween party.  *waves tiny flag*  #threedayhangover #notreally

So I didn't go all-out for Halloween this year - the usual decorations, for the most part, plus too much food, too much booze, lol.  I managed to throw my back out Saturday afternoon while getting ready for the party, and I still can't walk fully upright. It's fun.

This was the biggest hit of the entire party - and I have to say, I enjoyed hearing people howl with laughter after they went down the hall to the restroom, at both this "melted witch" (I got the idea from Pinterest), and at the artwork in the bathroom - I replaced the botanical prints in the frames on the walls with print-outs of funny s-rays, including Kermit the Frog with a hand skeleton, heehee).


Hint: no matter how clean the tub is, the water still looks kinda dirty...2-3 drops of blue food coloring made it look crystal-clear and clean.

My personal favorite Thing:  my spider-arium, filled with polyester "cobwebbing", some "mummy gauze", and a TON of hot-glue strings; as well as two large plastic-and-felt tarantulas, and a few packages of little plastic spideys (some of which escaped and were crawling up the dining room walls away from the tank).

This year I draped all the furniture in white curtains and sheets, as if the house was all shut up and vacant - it was pretty neat looking, if I do say so myself; and it saved my couch from a pretty bad drink spill, hehe.

( I was a biker dude for Halloween this year, complete with makeup-goatee and 5:00 shadow - that's my jacket on the chair in the pic).

This pic is mostly to say, "Hey, look at this awesome giant Ficus tree!"  it's seven feet tall;  I purchased it and all of the white curtains that I used for the furniture (98" white RITVA curtains from Ikea) from my old dance studio which went out of business recently.

THE AFTERMATH.

Good lord, that's a lot of cleanup.

I may or may not be personally responsible for the empty tequila and whiskey bottles.    0:)








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I See A Nightstand and I Want To...

WAY before - when I found this little guy on a curb.

Then I smoked some crack and painted it this color.

 And now it's black.

I also painted the matching blue file cart from the ex-art space/craft poop dumping ground black, like this one.






More on that soon.






Meanwhile, I've been playing Houseplant Rodeo in the living room again:

I had this big ol' Bird of Paradise plant (Strelitzia reginae) in the big window corner behind the wing chair, because (a) light and (b) sitting in the jungle.  On a wing chair.

See the loooong green stick sticking up out of the center of the plant? That's a leaf that formed but then never opened.  I finally realized it was because that one leaf was getting no sunlight, ever.

(yes, the lampshade is too small. deal with it)

So I put it on the floor back there, and shifted the living room furniture a bit to make sure it fit without being crammed-in.  I miss the visual height, but I like that it actually makes it look like the room is bigger than it is, because there are things tucked away behind the main seating area.

Also a ZZ Plant (Zamioculcas) on the little music table I made a while back, in that corner.

This is my view when I'm loafing about, usually playing games on my phone while waiting for my nails to dry, on the chaise lounge in the living room.  Whee.








More stuff coming soon.


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Beware the "Good Spot." Yeah, you know exactly what I mean.

Once upon a time, my TV hung on the wall of my living room. Eventually I re-arranged the furniture and I took it down.  I left the bars on the back of the TVso they wouldn't get lost, and I taped the bolts to the bracket itself, to make sure they stayed with it, and I put it carefully away.

C D E D B D bracket? 

Eventually, I wanted to hang the TV again, and one day, while out in the garage working on something else, I came across the bracket, and, thinking, "I'm going to need this soon," I took it out of the box it had been stored in and put it in A Good Spot, where I could just grab it when I was ready.

Perhaps it goes without saying that I never saw it again.

After having searched every inch of my garage and my house at least three times over, I finally gave up and bought a new bracket at Ikea the last time I happened to be there.  I thought I got a flat one, but once I got home I realized I had accidentally bought a swing-arm bracket instead, and since Ikea's 45 minutes away from my house in good traffic (which is less and less probable these days), I wasn't about to go back just to exchange a single item, so I went ahead and put it up.  Yay, TV!

LOL  NOPE

The next day, I noticed the tv wasn't level.  Dang it, I was just sure I had - never mind, I'll fix it. I took it down, leveled it correctly this time, put it back up.   The next day it wasn't level...again.   The next day it was worse.  And then one day, the tv fell off the wall.

It fell OFF.

It fell. The fuck. Off. 

TaterSalad.com

The day I went to take it down before that had a chance to happen, I touched the TV, and it fell off the wall into my hands.  Better that, than just falling off without me there to catch it, right?  It's not a very expensive tv, but it's the only one I have!

(And yes, I used all the hardware that came with it the first time. The second time, I used good, sturdy drywall anchors that I knew would work because they're the kind I always use.  The thing fell out of the wall because either the swing-arm or the whole thing was so unbalanced that the weight of the TV on the arm was too much for the wall bracket, even though the packaging said that the bracket was rated for a tv far heavier than mine.  Booo, Ikea, BOO).  

So the other day, I'm telling this story to my friend, Kress, and he says, "That bracket - is it black?  And about yea big?  Masking tape on it?"

Apparently, at some point the bracket, so carefully removed and put in A Good Spot had gotten knocked or placed into a random box, which ended up moving out with Kress last summer.  He didn't know what it was, but he thought it might be mine, so he saved it, and had had it in his truck for weeks just waiting to ask me about it, hehe.

YAY !!!!

This whole wall is very much a work-in-progress, by the way; although I really love the way it's coming together.  And by "together" I mean "slapdash and homemade and full of plants."  Hee.  The plants are very carefully situated so that they won't drip or fall on any of the electronics. They're also brand-new, which is why most some are kind of sparse:  They're rooted cuttings, freshly planted.  They'll be nice and fluffy in no time.  The cord-spaghetti behind the TV is going to be dealt with very soon.  And the mirror over the fireplace is going to be replaced with a really, really cool painting.  As soon as I paint it. 

All is well.

Soft Lighting, Small Lighting, Little Balls of Flame

Threw a couple of things together for my art studio last week that I'd been thinking about:

• A sheer, cotton, red, paisley curtain panel I've had in my fabric stash forever
• A wee (3") wooden shelf, cut from scrap, fixed in place about 2/3 up the window, with
• A bamboo rod and white muslin café curtain on clip-rings below it, and 
• A couple of glass bottles of Pothos and Philodenron rooting in them
• A trio of brightly-colored, glass, "Moroccan" candle lanterns hung where the sunlight can catch them.  They were a Christmas gift from a friend. :) 

After agonizing over what color to paint the room, I've decided NOT to paint it.  I like the white.  I like the backdrop it gives for ANY color I want.  I've decided that this is going to be my random, riotous, Boho paradise-y art space.  It IS a room for creativity, after all.  

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Stuff and Things

I think it's a good sign that

• I'm not knocking jars off my new spice rack every time I grab one of them, and 
• I'm still grinning from ear to ear and sighing, "ahhh" every time I walk into my pink sewing room.  

Right decisions, yay.  :) 

Meanwhile...

I've been puttering, not working on a whole lot of things.  Mostly small stuff.  I decided after the SCA event last week (which I'd been sewing for for weeks), that I would turn my attention to my landscaping...and then we started this freeze/warm cycle all over again.  It was 70º earlier this week, two days after a freeze;  today it's freezing and about to start sleeting and raining; and next week it's supposed to be in the 60s, but then it'll freeze and rain again.  Freaking winter.  

Instead, then, I've been doing some indoor gardening, which has ended up branching out into shelving and lighting.  I've been picking at my art room some, rearranging furniture and getting ready to gut the closet and re-do it so that I can start getting the room together.  (I have my painting space, but it's kind of a clearing in a junk forest at the moment).  

I put up a window shelf in my art room,  upon which now sits some Pothos and Philodendron cuttings in pretty jars, and below which is a simple wooden rod with dark copper rings and a plain, white, bit of muslin fabric as a café curtain.  There's a funky, paisley, linen sheer over one side of the window over it all in reds and browns, and a trio of brightly-colored glass "Moroccan" lanterns hung in the corner over the window as well.  

I'm going to be doing some more work in the room, bit by bit;  I've decided that since I have two big art projects to do for other people and the space isn't really conducive to working comfortably in, that I'll work on the paintings and the room simultaneously.  Mostly it's going to be dealing with the closet, and organizing the whole room better.  I've also decided that since I love Moroccan, Indian, and "boho" design elements, but that they're too much for my main living space, that I'll make my art room my brightly-colored and deeply-layered "boho" space - a little artsy, creative refuge.  

For the time being, though, I'm going to be taking on a second job soon, in order to take care of some debt and get myself a little bit ahead.  I've been struggling lately, and I'm tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I'm not going to have much time to work around the house, or for anything resembling a social life for a few months, so there may not be many new entries here; but I'll keep you guys apprised of what's going on.  

Wish me luck! 

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Something Green, Something New

I did two things yesterday:

1.   I re-organized some of the houseplants into a more green-

house-like space.  This is the window corner in the living

room, behind the little Day Sofa. 

2.  I started a gardening blog!  You all know about the Martian Death Fungus and the drought;  well, 2013 is the year I start up the serious gardening once again!  You can follow my progress a bit here, from time to time, but if you're really interested, go check out A Bit of Earth. 

Random Pictures from the Thanksgiving Break

While Kress and his mother and I celebrated Thanksgiving, a few small things around the house happened:

This crowded Peace Lily from my desk at work (which I brought home to divide months ago and never did) got cleaned up and separated into two pots:

The two new plants are very happy;  the smaller one in the center is a Chinese Evergreen that was in a pot with no drainage hole, and was NOT liking it.

Because I pretty much detest holidays, I completely neglected to plan any sort of table spread for dinner on Thursday, aside from the food.

This is simple and thrown-together (mostly from our basket of SCA feast gear, hehe), but it worked, and the food was awesome, which was the point. :)

Most of the cats, on the coffee table, scoping out someone's ice cream.  From the white-and-red one on the left, clockwise, that's
Sweet Pea
Rabi
Evie, and
Gypsy

Only Sasha is missing from this picture.

Kress' mom decided that she and I each needed a "little black apron" from Bloodbath & Beyond while we were out shopping Friday.  Lace trim and plastic pearls stitched around the neckline.  LOL!  Adorbs.



Hope everyone had a happy, safe holiday.