My Bedroom Retreat

I wasn't planning on entering my bedroom in any contests, but when Apartment Therapy announced their My Bedroom Retreat contest a week after I finished my bedroom, it seemed natural. My room was selected as an entry, which is always exciting, even if it's not doing as well as my past rooms have (my porch, Maxine's room, and my living room) in their Room for Color contest. Maybe I should have waited for that one! Either way, it's still fun to be picked. I wasn't actually sure what people would think of a peach room, so I've enjoyed reading all of the comments. 

You can see my entry here, or head over to the main contest page to check out all of the entries. My bedroom was also featured as one of the Don't-Miss Beautiful Bedrooms: Week One. 

Bedroom: Done

Finally! I know I've mentioned before that our bedroom was the last unfinished room in our house. When we bought our house, it was painted blue. Bright blue. Smurf blue.

You can see it behind Lissie here. Also, check out four year old Lissie--it's so strange to see her with all of her teeth!

It wasn't a bad color. It was actually very pretty, in some ways. It was just a very intense color, and I always felt kind of overwhelmed by it.

So I painted the room. I can't remember how long we'd lived here then, but under a year. I chose a pretty bluey-greeny-gray color (depending on the light) that every bedroom seemed to be around that time. I believe the exact color was Sherwin Williams Window Pane. And it was better. Sort of. It was definitely less intense, but one thing I didn't consider when choosing the color was that our north facing bedroom was already kind of gloomy. And in winter? Yuck. Seriously, it was cold, blah, and frankly, kind of depressing.

You can see it used in a sunny nursery on Apartment Therapy, where it's gorgeous. It doesn't even look like the same color.

Then I just kind of left it that way, for the next two years. Obviously, as you'll see in the other "before" photos, there was a lot more wrong with the room than just the paint color! But I knew I didn't love it, and I was never inspired to do anything with our room.

I finally took some pictures last month, and sent them to Ellen Kennon. I'm sure I've talked about her here before, because she's fabulous. She has helped me chose all of the paint colors in my house, and I don't know what I did before I knew about her--wait, I do know: I constantly repainted everything!

In my e-mail, I told Ellen that I wanted the room to feel warmer and cozier, and that I'd like a color that feels refreshing when I wake up in the morning. She sent back a list of five colors, and Brad and I quickly picked the one we wanted. Then, I ordered the paint, and due to a few mix ups, waited an agonizing month to get it.

And then, this:

So now when I wake up in the morning, instead of seeing this:

I see this:

The couch was moved to our porch, because nobody ever sat on it in our bedroom. This meant we could move the desk back to the other side of the room, across from the bed, which left space for us to bring the third dresser back up from the basement.

That gave me more drawer space--so no more t-shirts crammed in (and peeking out of) the drawers!

Ugh. Also, I moved a heap of "clean enough to wear again" clothes off the dresser before I took this picture:

Voila! No room for clothes:

Notice the pictures stacked under the dresser? I won't tell you how thick the layer of dust was, but I will tell you that there were more pictures stacked under the couch.

The blue plate is one of only two new things in this room. It's a "Pisces" (Brad's astrological sign) plate I found in a thrift store. I thought it was funny, and I liked the color, so I got it.

The other new thing is the gold branches on the wide dresser, also thrifted. Everything else was stuff I already had, and most of it was already in this room. It's crazy to me how different the room looks and feels, with just a few relatively simple (and cheap) changes. Unfortunately, it also means I really have no excuse for how bad it looked before!

Now, if I could just find the right curtains.

Pinterest: Sometimes Good, Sometimes Bad

Are you on Pinterest? I love it. You can see my boards here. My favorite thing about it is having a place where I can find and collect all of the things I see that inspire me. I've been "collecting" bedroom images since I opened my account last year, and now that we are (finally!) getting around to redoing our bedroom, I love that I can just go to that board and see everything in one place.

But this post isn't supposed to be about my bedroom. This post is about how many of the boards I create on Pinterest turn into giant "to do" lists. I already blogged about making these cute little dolls, and the pouch babies inspired by these that Lissie and I made here.

I didn't blog about the mash up of these and these that I tried to make. I tried on three separate occasions, but I couldn't get the wrapping right, and it drove me crazy. I'd like to try these again sometime when I have more time and more patience.

More recently, we tried making "calm down" jars. We've had the book Peaceful Piggy for a couple of years, and it's a much loved favorite of both girls. In the back, they give vague instructions for filling a jar with sand and water and watching it settle. But, we don't really have a good source for sand nearby, and I knew the water would get scuzzy after a while. So I went looking for alternatives, and it turns out that the book Moody Cow Meditates (which we don't have, but is in my wish list) has a glitter version. And you know how we love our sparkles!

Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I turned to that treasure trove of crafty things, Pinterest. I found a few recipes that looked promising, but this post on Momma Owl's Lab was my favorite. It was six different recipes! With notes! They already did all of the work! What could possibly go wrong?

We gathered our supplies:

We mixed, then we shook, and

all of the glitter floated up. To the top. Very fast. We used two variations of the recipes I linked to above, so I assumed the glitter was the culprit.

So we tried again, with different glitter, and

got the exact same results. Thinking maybe it was the corn syrup we used, I went to the store and got glycerine to try. By attempt number three, I was not happy, and poured out the glycerine-glitter mix before I took any photos, but it looked just like this:

So, that was frustrating. I am still not sure what went wrong, but I definitely needed a calm down jar for myself after that! I think we'll try a completely different recipe next time. I have seen some that use glitter glue. It seems like a lot of people had clumping issues (which was why I went with a plain glitter recipe), but we'll see.

Of course, sometimes things do work. Maybe it's not a craft, but just a good thrift store find (or this case, Estate Sale Warehouse find). I pinned this art supply caddy a year ago, but old soda crates aren't that easy to come by around here. I finally found one though, and for a cool $12.50, it was all mine!

It doesn't quite erase the sting of failure, but it helps.

Room for Posterity

Well, I entered a room in Apartment Therapy's Room for Color contest again this year. This time, in the "cool" category. I wrote about last year's entry here. Unfortunately, we had a lot going on, and I didn't have a chance to post about the contest while it was was still going on. I'm going to post about it now, even though the contest is over, because I still think it's exciting!

This is our "green" room, which I already posted about here. Here is my entry: Natasha's "Outside In" Room. Be sure to check out the other entries too. Even though you can't vote anymore, there is some great inspiration there!

Here are the photos from my entry, along with a couple that didn't make the cut. I took new photos, because I wasn't thrilled with the first ones I took right after I painted the room.

On Ponding

Years ago, when we still lived in our old house, Brad mentioned that he thought he would like having a pond. So when we looked at this house, with two ponds in the backyard, we were kind of excited. It was late fall at the time, and inexperienced as we were, we were undaunted by the fact that the ponds were low on water, and full of leaves.

We thought we could clean them out in the spring, fill them with water, throw in some fish, and that it would be fun. Fun! We were wrong. I'd always thought of ponds as nothing more than landscaping. But they are much more than that. More than a hobby, even. A lifestyle.

The spring after we moved, we were so busy with the inside of the house, that we didn't really do anything outside. And the ponds sat. Stagnant water. Our backyard was a mosquito city. I'm not sure we went out there at all that summer, unless it was absolutely necessary. The next year, when we started on the smaller of the two ponds, it looked like this:

And it smelled really bad. See the slimy pile of leaves in the back? The overgrown lamium patch to the left? The weeds growing through the rocks? It was awful. We drained it, scrubbed it, and filled it. Then we added water, plants, and fish.

But it wasn't actually that straightforward, because I don't like to jump into anything. I always like to do a lot of research first. Find out the best way to clean the pond, whether to add anything to the water, what to do about mosquitos, whether to add fish, and which kind of fish to add. Lots of details. It was overwhelming.

When we ended, the pond looked like this:

Not exactly the lush, green landscaping jewel I'd pictured, but it was a huge improvement.

So I have learned a lot about ponds in the last few years. I have learned about the different types fish and plants, and how to maintain a healthy little low-maintenance eco-system in our backyard. While those things are interesting to know, I have also learned that they are unimportant compared to the lessons in patience and delayed gratification that ponding has taught me. The excitement of waiting for the pond to thaw, to see if any of our little feeder goldfish survived the winter. Then discovering they had, and experiencing our first algae bloom and having to wait a month for our plants to establish themselves and clear the water so we could see the fish again.

Rhythms and routines have always been something I have always struggled with in my day-to-day activities, but during the past few years, I have come to appreciate the rhythm of the ponds. From the first cleaning in the spring, to the final cleaning in the fall. The way the ponds rest in the winter, but are full of life again in the summer. Even the somewhat annoying nightly ritual of moving the water hyacinth to the big pond and the morning ritual of moving it back to the small pond, to keep the raccoons from eating it.

It's not something I would willingly undertake, but I am glad we stumbled into it.

Backyard Fun

I have to admit, it has been kind of nice having Brad home more this spring, because we've been able to get a lot done in our yard. It was pretty weedy and overgrown when we bought our house, and we didn't do much the first year because we were so focused on the inside of the house. We kind of left the "garden" areas, to see what would grow. As you can see from this picture, nothing but weeds grew.

The sidewalk on the left continues around the yard in a "U" which leads to the ponds. I was told the people who lived here before us had a garden in the bottom of the "U" but whatever they had is long gone. Not sure what's going on next to the garage there either, but there is a little spot outlined in cement (we're working on a fairy garden in that area), and the section of yard on the other side of the sidewalk was also full of weeds.

By our second year here, it was a beast. The lamium around the small pond managed to completely overtake the back garden area, obscuring the hostas, daylilies, and even a gorgeous peony bush we didn't know was there.

Last fall, we mowed everything in the "U" down, and piled all of our leaves on top. I bet the neighbors behind us were horrified. This spring, we cleared away the leaves and were left with a relatively weed free area. Right now, we're working on installing a butterfly garden, which has been a great learning experience for all of us.

We're doing it on a budget, of course. The bad thing about having extra time because you're unemployed is that there is no extra money to do the things you'd like to do! So we're adding to it gradually, using small perennials and annuals. Next year we'll add more perennials, but now it looks a bit wimpy. I'll probably add more annuals soon, but I am trying to take things slowly this year, rather than doing what I usually do, which is buy five flats of flowers when I can't possibly plant them all before they shrivel up and die from the heat. See? Frugal.

We haven't had many new butterflies this year, but we have these guys every year (I think they're actually moths, but don't tell the girls!). If you're outside in the sun on a warm evening, you can't keep them from landing on you.

Especially if you are a butterfly princess.

Check out what's left of the weed patch behind Lissie. I was feeling a little discouraged the other day, but after seeing that picture from two years ago, I'm feeling a lot better about what we've done. Unfortunately, I discovered poison ivy growing in that section, which has slowed me down a bit.

The Green Room

There is an enclosed porch off our kitchen, and when we first moved into our house we kept it closed off from the rest of the house. It was the middle of winter, so it was very cold in there and it became known as "the cold room." There is another small, kind of triangular room off of the porch, which became known as "the weird cold room" due to its irregular shape. 

Of course, as winter turned to spring, and spring turned to summer, the rooms got hotter and hotter. But still, they were the cold rooms. They are both oddly shaped, small, and windowed on all four walls, so we weren't exactly sure what to do with them. We tried using the main room as a mudroom, but that didn't work, because we always use the front door, and you enter this porch through the back door. I tried to use it as my sewing area, but that didn't work, because the space was too awkward to use efficiently and always full of the random items kids tend to drop near entrances and exits. 

So, it sat. And as any unused room will, it slowly became a junk room. I took pictures of it before I put everything away, but I lost them somehow. So you only get to see the clean befores. Which is probably really for the best. But take my word for it: it was bad. 

Something had to be done. I sorted and cleaned and organized and donated. And the room looked better. But still, it wasn't inviting. And I knew it would fill up again, because that is the nature of unused rooms.

So I took the initiative, and filled it with plants. 

And painted it green. I used Ellen Kennon's Peridot, which is absolutely luscious.

I also finally, finally finished the craft area I planned to set up for the girls for Christmas (but it's tiny, and really hard to photograph).

So now we can sit back there while they sit back there, which means they will sit back there more often. I can see our entire backyard from there too, so no more hot afternoons spent sitting in a plastic chair baking in the sun while the girls play outside.

One day I may even do something about that floor.

Ellen Kennon also wrote about my porch on her blog. She talks about the reasons for going green in rooms like this, and a little about how we chose the color. People are sometimes surprised to learn that I use a color consultant, and think it means she just tells me what color to paint everything! Maybe some are like that, but Ellen is great about considering what I like, and often gives open ended advice. In this case, she said to pick any green from her Nature's Palette. I loved the idea of green, and there were a lot to choose from. I think any of them would have been beautiful in this room, so I just picked my favorite one!

I did a Flickr set with all the befores and afters if you'd like to check them out here: Porch

Small Kids, Big Color

I wasn't going to post about this here, because I just posted about the other contest, and this is hardly a home design blog--although that probably counts as homemaking too, right? And this blog is kind of about homemaking. Once in a while. But still, I wasn't going to post about the contest--except then Maxine's room made it into the finals! And I am too excited to not post about that.

Small Kids, Big Color is the annual color contest on Ohdeedoh--the kids' version of Apartment Therapy's Room for Color contest. This year, they put up 62 entries and the top nine made it into the finals. This really exciting for me, because I remember looking at, and voting on, contest entries three years ago (and every year since) and thinking how fabulous they were and wishing I had a fabulous room like that in my house. And I guess now I do. I should probably also mention that Ohdeedoh has been a huge inspiration for me. They feature so many great, and accessible, kids' rooms that there isn't enough time in the day to look at them all (at least, not for me). Even if I don't win, I feel so honored that my room got to be a part of it all, and doubly so that my room made it to the finals.

You can check out my original entry here: Maxine's Vintage Sunshine.  You may get a laugh, as I did, from all the comments saying how warm and sunny the room looks. And it is sunny, yes. But it is also an unheated sleeping porch, with three windowed walls. In Michigan. So it is definitely not warm--until June. Even so, I wouldn't exactly call it "warm" then, so much as "unbearably hot." But isn't it lovely?  We do enjoy spending lots of time in there during the winter, because of all the light.

If you'd like to vote, or just check out all of the other finalists, here is the link: Ohdeedoh Small Kids, Big Color Finalists. They're all beautiful rooms, and full of inspiration, but I've put pictures of a few of my favorites below.

Felix's Tintin Inspired Nursery

Grandmother Inspired Room

Chloe's Soiree Suite

Maxine Takes Over the Guest Room

I know I've been an infrequent blogger lately. We have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to do much on the computer. The upside is, despite having guests for almost two weeks solid, we have been very productive.

How our guest room originally looked

Speaking of guests, the project I am most excited about completing is the transformation of our guest room into Maxine's bedroom (though she still has to give it up when guests come!). Our bedroom is ridiculously large, so when we first moved in, and Maxine was 3 months old, it was natural to have her in there with us. Of course, that got old after, oh, about three minutes. But we stuck it out, because the plan has always been to move her into Ariana's room next fall when Ariana leaves for college.

But did I mention that the guest room, our upstairs sleeping porch, is my absolute favorite room in our house? The windows, the light, the fun painted floor.  The windows. It was the room I was standing in when I realized I needed this house. And it seemed a shame that our favorite room was the one we all spent the least amount of time in.

So, although we do have guests often enough to warrant having a guest room, it seemed that it might be better to use the room for Maxine, because we don't have guests that often. It was initially pretty barebones. Just a guest room with baby stuff in the drawers, but as time went on, I realized that it was Maxine's first room, and I wanted it to be for her.

How the guest room looked when Maxine first moved in.

Because it's temporary I'm cheap, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on redecorating, so everything in the room is something we already had.

The quilt at the foot of the bed and the little doll pillow on the chair were more treasures from my mother-in-law's basement. She made the quilt for Brad when he was a baby. I used the leftover Orangery paint from the dining room buffet to paint the headboards and the bookshelves. I've had the little bookshelves forever, and I think each girl has used them in her bedroom at one point. They are the perfect size for a little one.

The stool at the foot of the bed was made by my great-grandfather. The original cane top is badly damaged, so I covered it with a board and some foam, and I have lost track of how many different fabrics (the current one is Heather Ross's Dancing Rabbits). I found the quilt rack at the side of the road with a "free" sign taped to it. It's perfect for hanging Maxine's "dancing dresses" because the room doesn't have a closet. I think that side looks crowded, but it's just enough space for Maxine to slip in and out to get books and dresses, and she loves having pictures hung at her level.

I made the curtains from some vintage fabric I found when Ariana (who was then 10) and I went on our first, and only, road trip. We drove to Minnesota through the upper peninsula, and I found the fabric in this great little quilt/antique shop. I know, could there be a store more perfect for me? It's either too bad, or a really good thing, that it's so far away from where I live! So, I've had this fabric for eight years and I have been afraid to use it for anything. Which is silly, of course, but it was really hard to make the first cut. I didn't have a long enough piece to do two panels, so I added fabric to the top and bottom to lengthen it.

All of the artwork came from thrift stores, except for the princess and the pea one, which I made using bits of my favorite Heather Ross fabrics. Lissie has a matching one in her room made from the pink and orange princess fabric. I love that they both happened to go so well in the girls' rooms! We found the poodle picture separately from the other animals, and in a different sort of frame, so that's why it's in a different spot.

I made the owl and Lissie made the ladybug for her birthday last year. Ariana, Lissie and I made the clothespin dolls a few years ago. I never see anybody playing with them, but they tend to pop up in random spots around the house.