Simply Curious

Everybody keeps reassuring me that it's OK to not totally decorate a room/house all at once.  Sometimes it takes time to find that right piece, and to just relax and keep my eyes open.

Lately I've been concentrating on the bedroom.  It's a big room, fairly bare, and yellow.  Very, very yellow.  Daffodil yellow, in fact.   I hate it.  Mostly what I'm trying to do is make it seem less yellow.  I tried to tone it down with browns, but it hasn't worked too well.  Now I'm trying whites and creams to soften it.  I was fortunate in finding a great deal at Burlington Coat Factory.  A soft creamy colored damask set of panels that have an attached valance.  It's got a pretty, unusual drape of sheer fabric attached, too.  Best part - only $20 a panel.  They replaced the dark maroon curtains I bought when Brian first got sick.  He didn't even HAVE curtains, and I figured he'd have a better time sleeping with room darkening/noise dampening panels.  They worked well until we painted the room and bought the fancy bedspread, when they took on a primary color aspect.

The bad part about the new curtains is that they weren't lined.  I had to get blackout liners, and again lucked out, this time at Wal-Mart.  Shockingly, they were on clearance at $10 a panel, and turned out to be eco friendly, which meant no smell!  Boy do they work.  It's actually kind of unnerving to have it THAT dark in the room.  The LED on the fire alarm is annoying now.  I did have a problem with light coming up between the top of the panels and the wall, but solved that with a strip of cardboard wedged between the curtain rod and the wall.

Having new curtains also meant new curtain rods.  I wanted something fancy, and while I couldn't match the flame finials on the bed and the monster chest-of-drawers, I did find an oval shaped finial that mimicked the reeding on the bedposts and details on the chest and nightstands.  I'm still working out how to use holdbacks.   They sort of push the curtains away from the wall, which doesn't look so good.

Since my attention has been devoted to that room, I started thinking about other areas and what I wanted to do.  The new curtains actually make the room look bigger, or at least that wall farther away.  I was afraid that the absence of dark color on that wall would make the chest of drawers loom even larger, but it seems ok.  I turned instead to the bookshelf that stood on the opposite wall from the chest.  It's not quite as tall, and actually looks kind of small and sad.  I thought a vase of flowers would help - something to look at while in the room, plus add height and balance.


With that in mind, I wandered into Michaels to see what they had pre-made.  (More luck - a big floral sale!)  I found one sample on display that I liked, except for the bright yellow tiger lilies in it.  I didn't want to add MORE yellow to the room, and frankly, I have an aversion to tiger lilies.  I know it's weird, it's just they have an awful smell, and it makes me dislike even the fake ones.

So I looked around, and started picking out stems to design my own arrangement.  I found some cream dogwood-like florals, and some big flower things - possibly gardenias? - that matched.  I added some green leaves to the bottom, and also some tall stemlike bits with berries hanging off.  I matched it all with a metal vase made to look like wood - matching the mahogany of the rest of the room. 


I've never really done much floral arranging . . . just a lackadaisical arrangement in my bathroom: pink and blue flowers shoved in a Snapple container.  I enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out how it should look and how to solve what I felt was missing.  The gardenias made it cohesive, the berries added dark bits of interest.  The greenery was a bit too much, and I still need to mess with it a bit to get a better balance.  I couldn't figure out how to easily take pieces off without resorting to cutting them.

I'm very pleased overall.  Now I'm thinking about wall decorations, as there's nothing hanging on the walls at all.  That could take ages, so I made a side trip and am now working on curtains for the master bathroom.  I've had the fabric since last summer, I think.  It's just taken me all this time to figure out the instructions.  I'm used to one inch scale curtains, where I can just glue them on the wall.