Bedroom and Bathroom Update

With 14 of our closest friends coming over for the Super Bowl, we had a great excuse to kick some home projects into high gear.

First, remember that sad... pathetic, really... bedroom? 

No?  Oh, here, let me remind you...

                

Yep. Pretty bad.

Well, we ordered new wood blinds, new duvet cover, hung some curtains and honeymoon art work, and now, we have this...

It's not great but it's an improvement! 

The collection of photographs are all from our honeymoon in Cape Cod.  I had a HUGE obsession with the dunes...

From Hyannis

From Martha's Vineyard

From Martha's Vineyard

From Nantucket

I'm not exactly Ansel Adams, but I was proud of my point-and-shoot camera prints!

We still need to get a headboard and spruce up the end tables and fan but it's progress!

And the now the bathroom! 

We painted and added some decor but it was in desperate need of a new floor.  The original floor was a large piece of marbled, cream laminate. 

So I picked up some concrete grey peel-and-stick laminate tiles and we (when I say we, I mostly mean George) spent 8 hours peeling, laying, cutting and shaving to get the perfect fit.  So worth it!

Here is the before...

Our tile samples...

the original floor is under the small brown square

Final product!

It's a bit different but we really like it!  It makes the room more polished.  We have to touch up the trim here and there.  And we plan on installing a new double sink and vanity and a new shower surround this summer.

These two projects were done within a week of the party!  Maybe we should plan another gathering to get us going on the next project???  :)

Happy Monday All!

Bedroom Blues

I have absolutely no idea what to do with our bedroom.

Ugh.  I wish I could blame it on the lighting but I can't... it's that blah and white.

As Oprah would say, "Let's get real". 

Okay, let's.

Confession: I was going to copy this picture -



I know! I know!  I promise, I know what you are thinking.  And I don't know what to say.  I am SO lost. 

I have no passion for this room.  I have scoured blogs, HGTV.com and magazine websites.  I have bookmarked a bunch of looks we love.  But I can't seem to get it together on this project.

I ordered the duvet.  We had added chocolate brown, wood blinds to the windows.  We painted the walls white.  I have made efforts.  But I can't seem to figure out how to pull this look together!

I simply don't know what to do.  I don't want to put the duvet on yet so I can go match shams and pillows, so maybe that is the issue?

So I need design advice.  I have even asked some design blogs who do inspiration boards for help. 

I am getting to the point where I am not liking this look anymore.  It's annoying me! haha

Any help/thoughts/input would be GREATLY appreciated!

Have any of you been stumped on a room?  How did you get past the funk?

I Always Feel Like Someone's Watching Me...

... cause our bedroom has sheers!

Yes, currently our bedroom has sheer curtains. 

And I'm not sure why I haven't gotten around to switching them out sooner, but I haven't.  Maybe it's because over the summer, they looked fresh and airy?  Maybe it's the overall lack of decor in that room?  Maybe my subconscious likes to show my goods to the neighborhood?  Who knows!

But with out new bedding coming (any freakin' day now, UPS), I'm ready to kick our bedroom makeover into high gear.  Next on our to-do list comes window treatments. 

We are keeping it basic and sticking with faux wood blinds in mahogany. In the fall, we bought these faux wood blinds for the living room...

(Ugh, sorry for the poor lighting!)

I stumbled onto SelectBlinds.com and decided to make the purchase, even though I had never heard of the site before. 

OMG!  We LOVE them!  They are dark, classic, custom made to our window specifications and super easy to install (huh, Geo?!). 

Oh and they seem to ALWAYS be having a sale (doing my happy cheap-o dance!).

And today was no exceptions. We ordered two sets of faux wood blinds, made to our weird window sizes, for $96.  But wait, that's not all!  And with today's 30% off coupon they post right on their site (no need to Google for a code), that is two sets of blinds for $68!  And it's 2 days to process and free 2-day shipping.

Thank you SelectBlinds.com!  I heart you.

Bedding Breakdown

I did it.  I finally broke down and bought our dream bedding...

I still can't believe fate brought us (me and the bedding) together again!

After two months of stalking... and finding it impossible to pull the purchase trigger... our bedding had sold out on Overstock.com.  I searched all over but could not find it anywhere.  Heck, we could not find bedding we like, period.  This was the first we both loved and I let it go because I am cheap.

So after staring at our sorry-excuse-for-a-love-chamber for a few hours, I thought it was time to re-energize our efforts to get the bedroom complete.

Naturally, I turn to Overstock once again.  And there it was; with a big, red label saying "Only 1 left!"

In 2.2 seconds, I had the bedding in my cart and my card number ready.

I called George one more time to confirm I should get it.  He agreed and I click "submit order". 

It should be here next week!  So I am hoping to make an upholstered headboard this weekend.

I'm thinking something like this from QVC...

But who knows.  Maybe I will go crazy and end up with ...

Or ...

We shall see!

Wordle: Cheap Art

While the search is on for bedding, I have started thinking about art and accessories.
 
I took some of the sand dune photos from our honeymoon, sharpened them, made them black and white, printed and framed those little lovelies to make a college on our largest wall.

Now I am turning to my old bag-of-wedding-tricks and making some art.  My assistant: Wordle.com.

The program asks you to enter a bunch of words then they mix them up and gives you cool layouts, colors and fonts to choose from.

So I took a bunch of words from George's life that have meaning to him or us.  And a bunch of words from my life that have meaning to me or us.  And the result... his and hers art!

Now, you are not able to save your Wordle (without publically publishing it) but you can increase your monitor zoom, print-screen, paste in Paint, mess with the margins and paper size then you got some custom art.

Now, I just have to figure out printing and framing.  Stay tuned!

Dream a Little Dream

George and I are in the midst of redoing the bedroom.
At first, we were going with something like this...

It was summer. It felt fresh and cool and, well, summery!

I had been craving a more patterned duvet for years now. We have been doing the solid and the solid-with-a-contrasting-boarder looks but I'm kind of over it.

I thought this was feminine yet not floral and the colors were obvious without being bold.

So I bought the paint and $80 and four months later; We ain't lovin' it.

We kept with the Pottery Barn Simply White walls (because sister is not about to take an $80 bite on paint) and are now researching new bedding that is in the grey-color palette with some scroll or geometric shapes.
Something like this...

And that's about it.  We want this bedding!  We just have to wait until the budget can let us have it.

Any thoughts on affordable grey bedding?  And ideas on how to make our white walls work?