GOLD Love: TV Room Redesign

We have a finished attic space in our house that I'm really looking forward to decorating.  It's very plain right now, with carpet that needs a little love and walls that could definitely use another coat of paint.  It's a tricky room because it's got the slanted ceiling that a lot of attics have and it also lacks light.  There's only one small window at the end of the long room.  Someday, I would love to add large dormer windows to open the space and add light but we shall see if that ever becomes a priority on our to-do list.

In the meantime, I know I could paint, add more storage and some decorative accessories and the room would be a lot more welcoming.  It's the room we have our only TV in, so I'd love to hang out in there and feel like it suits me.  Though we are often in this room, it is my least favorite in the house.  I would love to have it reflect the design sensibility of the rest of our home but have it's own unique style since it's set-apart from a lot of the rest of our home.  

This is where I'm hoping to take the room:  

I want to paint the walls a bright white to keep what little light there is in the room.  My friend Susan came over a few weeks ago and she had the idea to keep the walls white and paint the baseboards, door and window trim black. As soon as she said it, I knew that's what I would do. I LOVE black and white.  It can make a room feel modern OR vintage and never goes out of style.  The rest of my house has white trim but this room is sort of in the corner of the house and something different would be a lot of fun!

When I clear the room of all the stuffed animals, cushions, random kid-related objects and other miscellany it's hoarding, I will take a photo and show you the bones I am working with :)

I LOVE LOVE the wallpaper in my moodboard and planned to use it at each end of the room, but I think I've decided to go with a less expensive and easier-to-apply material.  These gold dot decals from The Land of Nod:  

{A Place For Us}

This photo won me over.  They don't have to just look good in a kids' room.  They are very Kate Spade-y and I love them!  Plus, who wants to put wallpaper on slanted walls? 

Other than that, I plan to get a black and white striped rug to cover the carpet and add pattern to the room.  I'm leaning toward this one from Crate and Barrel right now.  It's a great price for a large rug.

We will keep our current couch and chair-and-a-half in the room, which look similar to the ones on the moodboard.  I'm thinking of ordering several shelves from IKEA to create a low and enclosed storage unit for toys and to keep our TV on.  And of course, there will be lighting and accessories.  I'll keep you updated on the progress.  I'm hoping to paint soon!

Happy Day!

Rachel

Olioboard + a beautiful post on Christmas decorating

Today I wanted to share with you a little something I thought you might find useful.  Maybe you have heard of it but if you haven't and you like to decorate, then you probably need to know about it. When I first heard of it 6 months ago, I said to my husband, "How did I not know about this until now?!".

Introducing Olioboard...

This amazing website allows you to create "mood boards" for rooms in your house. Mood boards help you to see everything together in one place to know how colors, textures, patterns and different furniture will all play off of each other. 

Sure, you can make something like this in Photoshop or PS Elements (if you have those programs) but it could literally take you hours and hours finding and cropping all the photos you need for your design board.  Olioboard saves you the hassle and crops the backgrounds out of the images for you and even has a library of products to search that can easily be added to your board.  Also, you can have an "add to Oliboard" button on your browser's bookmark bar so when you find something at Anthropolgie.com that you want to incorporate into your mood board, you can click the add button, and voila, it's added to your account on Oliboard!  LOVE!

Here is a board I made for our art room:

If I showed you pictures of our art room I think you could see how this references the board.  That room isn't 100% finished but someday I will photograph it and show you!

This is a board I made for our master bedroom:

We haven't started in on that room yet (who knows when we will!) and my design may change along the way but I like what I have so far.

Next, I will probably do a board for our TV room.  It's dark and has low ceilings, I REALLY need to work some magic in there!  I might even solicit your help for that :)

So, check out Olioboard.  It's simple and easy to use.  I promise you will love it!


I also wanted to share with you this beautiful post from The Nester.  Sure the photos of her home are gorgeous but the heart behind the photographs is what I really love.  Nothing is ever perfect and neither are our homes. None of us have it all together and in the adjacent room to something beautifully decorated, might be spilled cheerios on the floor that I have been stepping around for two days.

I have a deep desire to be authentic in my life.  I love sharing my heart; probably to a fault.  So I hope this blog will be apart of my heart as you journey through my home.  You may see my tree that I lovingly decorated but you don't see how my kids broke an ornament the night we decorated it, I yelled and they went up to bed crying.  Sigh.

Life happens here.  Joy, sorrow, strife, peace, stress, tears... it's all here, it just might have a pretty bow on it.  So let's be real together.

See you real soon!
Rachel