Tag: interior decorating

Caution: Graphic Content

Haha, just kidding . Don’t need to shield your children’s eyes, I am just talking about using bold pattern in the home.

I noticed that most of the things in my house that make me smile are graphically very striking and bold. A few examples:

Pillows from Urban Outfitters, Wal-Mart, Target, IKEA. I had a major crush on those yellow Dwell Studio for Target pillows for AGES (since I saw them on younghouselove.com) and they FINALLY went on clearance so I snatched the last two at our local Target!!

Diamond Jute rug from World Market

Chair covers I DIY’d with fabric from JoAnn’s

Duvet cover from IKEA

Towels from the Better Homes and Gardens line (I’m still in denial that I got them at Wal-Mart)

Vine curtains from IKEA (Noticing an IKEA trend?)

More to come, naturally, as tastes change and evolve. What’s on-trend today may look tired and old soon (although I’ve had the green IKEA pillows for a long time). I am trying hard to learn to be bold and creative when layering patterns. Unfortunately I can’t go pillow-crazy because Doug says it looks girly. Soon, hopefully I can do some outdoor pillows (we have dreams of an outdoor couch/lounge) and maybe go a little more crazy out there!!

Dorm Life

This time six years ago, I was getting geared up to move into my first dorm. Little did I know my room was going to be extremely long and narrow and my roommate would arrive a week before me and take the “big” half.

Over at Apartment Therapy they are talking about ways to dress up a dorm room and painting pictures of bleak, off-white cinder block prisons. Well, yeah, I guess this is how most dorms are, in reality. It’s easy to get really low-quality colorful carpets and comforters and spruce things up. Did anyone else ever notice how low-quality most dorm stuff is? I guess it’s cheap, and anything can happen in a dorm room…. yeah, cheap (replaceable) really is the way to go.

Anyway, I used my graduation gift cards and got my dream comforter set from Urban Outfitters. I was SO not about to get one from Target and match all the girls on my hall (this really was a fear of mine at the time). We packed up the car and drove from California to Kansas.

I was lucky, because my dorm walls weren’t white, or even beige for that matter. They were robin’s egg blue. Light, airy, glorious robin’s egg blue. I still think that it was the perfect color to go with my dorm decor (although it didn’t compliment everyone’s stuff. Oh well).

My dorm room, 2005-2006.

Although my half of the room was tiny and cramped, it forced me to think about living in a small space and adapt and be creative. The lofted bed was literally my only option, but I had just come from 7 years in a lofted bed at home so it wasn’t a problem. However, my sophomore year, I had a room to myself and finally had a ground-level bed.

Yes, the picture above is pretty messy, but honestly, on the small half of the room, there was nowhere for the “stuff” to go. I’m just grateful for the not-hideous carpet, the fact that I had carpet at all (not linoleum), and those beautiful robin’s egg blue walls. It could have been so much worse.