Moody Blues

Blergh-blah-blah-blah.

The above is my brain right now. The summer heat has finally fried it. Maybe that's why perusing snowy, Nordic-themed items has been so soothing. Also, taking a big step and changing the paint color in Grayson's room from this:

 

Apparently we dislike this color so much
we didn't even take a real "after" shot.

 

to this:

 

feels very cool and refreshing. (Also, sorry, these pictures are in no way "styled" and the lighting is terrible. We were in one of those "Just...take pictures! Get it done!" moods.)

It looks a little dark now, but we think that once we add some light, airy curtains and accent things, it'll lighten the feel of the room. 

We really lucked out with this paint, we grabbed it a few weekends ago when Ace Hardware had their "Buy one gallon, get one gallon free!" deal. (We also picked up the white we used to finish our Board and Batten)

It's the first time we've used a Clark & Kensington brand paint to do a room (we're usually Behr people. Aahh! Bear People!) and, while we did notice some differences, for the most part, we liked it. 

When we painted this room yellow a few months ago, we were painting over a pinky-beige that the sellers had used for every room in the house (we called it "band-aid beige"). Yellow over beige? No problem! Oh, how naive we were. It took us three coats, two whole gallons of paint and there were still spots where the beige showed through. But by that point we had already decided that we had chosen the wrong color and were not willing to invest in more of it just to finish. Neither were we willing to jump right in to painting it an entirely different color. So, the room stayed butter yellow for a few months while we saved to replenish our painting budget. 

Finding a new color was fairly easy. We had toyed around with the idea of a blue-green room before, but decided against it in favor of the brighter yellow. Well, this time we trusted our instinct and, when we got our free gallon from Ace, had them color match Plumage by Martha Stewart.
 

It looks a little washed out here, but on the walls, as you can see, it's quite bold. 

Clark & Kensington is not "no VOC" , only "low VOC" which we don't love (Behr is "no VOC") but the coverage of this paint was A-ma-zing. One gallon, two coats did....the entire room.
 

 

I did a dance. 

Aside: we left that ugly, jagged strip of unpainted wall around the ceiling on purpose. Experience has taught us that we are not the tidiest of painters (even with tape) around the ceiling and, since we will be putting up crown molding in here anyway, we opted to leave a little seam. Yes, it's tacky and unattractive, but we thought it was preferable to a smudgy ceiling. For us, anyway. Not recommending it as a "new look". 

In addition to new paint, we also have some awesome mood boards to share! 

My sister-in-law has really been helping to keep us inspired and energetic about Grayson's room. I'm so grateful. There are many days when I open the door and think, "Did the toys give birth to MORE toys last night while we slept? I will never conquer this room. Toys, you've won." 

But then I pull up these Mood Boards and I feel re-energized. 

 

The first two are kind of what we are going for now and the third one is updated a bit for when Alice is a little older and they're sharing a room. It's nice to see how the look can evolve. 

We have already made an Ikea run for those curtains and a sheepskin. And we are planning another - I need that duvet cover!  

It's exciting to see this room coming together. Grayson likes everyone spending so much time in his room and he also appreciates all the Frozen songs I sing while I'm in there. 

...Actually, that's a lie. 

He always (every time!) says: "I'm just Grayson and you're just Mamma and don't sing that song."

How long do you think it will be before we, as a society, can say "let it go" without bursting into song?

My money's on 1,000 years...

Great Odin's Beard!

In the same vein of last Friday's post, I wanted to share a list of things I have fallen for this week.

But this week, there's a twist! 

*pause for musical sting* 

I'm not too proud to admit that's a term I learned from Peg + Cat.

I know we mentioned last week that we were re-doing Grayson's room. (To reflect his maturing, three year old taste.) Unfortunately, it looks like that's going to take us a little longer than we thought because we made a mistake ...

We got inspired. 

As I believe I have previously mentioned, I'm really digging the sparse, light, unfinished wood, vaguely Scandinavian trend that's beginning to happen now. We also found ourselves contemplating some "bolder" design elements than we usually do: leather, a stenciled accent wall, various mundane things (like baskets and boxes) but done in metallics. 

Then, it dawned on us.

The best way to unify the design trends we were thinking and also keep it from feeling to "adult decorating takeover":

Viking.
 

 

Swords, arrows, runes, leather, gold, fur...does this theme not have it all?

(Alright, maybe our enthusiasm is getting the best of us. Just a touch.) 

So, while we're re-tooling some of our plans to be a little more, err, Nordic, I thought I would share five things I would love to have for Grayson's castle bedroom.

1. Faux Sheepskins

via

Ikea has this great faux sheepskin for $10! Can you believe it? Well neither can we but we plan on snagging one or ten for some super snuggly floor covering, bed covering, everything covering, etc.

 

2. Toys

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This adorable paper doll-esque Viking ship is from etsy but it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Viking toy possibilities. There's playmobil, toy swords, Legos, etc.

 

3. Prints

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What's more Viking that Odin's Ravens? Or you could go with pictures of Viking warships, but we've always been fans of crows.
 

4. Books

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Books make fantastic decorations. They're the only ones you can read too!

 

5. Handmade

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Here's that mention of leather. Some sort of chair or ottoman done with leather would be a great touch and perfect place to read that decoration up there.


 

Now, I'm not a total slacker, I do have one little project to share. (Let's make this post super long, 'kay? Okay!)

We wanted to update Grayson's bed, (which was my bed when I was little and, before that, my dad's when he was little), showing it a little love, but we didn't want to just paint it. So we thought adding some textural interest might be fun. I like the idea of soft bedding against more rugged materials, the contrast feels cool. We thought of wrapping the headboard in rope but (and this is where you learn something about us) rope is kind of expensive. Or, it was more than we were planning on spending for a spur of the moment project. ($9 for 50 feet and we would need about 200) So we ended up picking up four rolls of Jute Twine. 

(Oh, my goodness, this is seriously the only picture I have of the twine. Me with vaguely purple skin holding it in my Giant Alien Hand! But, the twine! Let's remember what this picture is about, people, the twine!)

Much thinner than we had originally planned, but we thought it would give a similar look. And at $2.33 for 190 feet, much wallet friendlier. 

Before we bought our twine we measured our headboard. The area we wanted to cover was 3 feet wide and 1 foot high (which actually meant 2 feet high, since we'd be wrapping the twine, front and back). So four spoils of twine at 190 feet each was more than enough. 

Here is the headboard before:

 

Now, the one little challenge was this area here:
 

We thought wrapping the twine around that area might be a problem. The twine might just bunch and not be able to bridge the gap or it might leave the edge of that curve sticking out. 

To the rescue...duct tape! 

 

Classy, right? 

But by running a thin strip of duct tape across the gap we were able to wrap the twine as if the cut out wasn't there at all; just a gentle curve. 

Attaching the twine on the back of the top left corner with some hot glue, we began to wrap. 

 

And wrap.
 

And wrap. 

The whole process actually went fairly quickly, maybe an hour all together. We added a dab of hot glue every so often to make sure the twine wouldn't shift and...

Ta-da!

Finished!

(I apologize for the seasick angle of this photo, I was holding a baby and laying on a lumpy pillow.)

 

There, that's a little better. 

Our first step toward our Viking bedroom is complete. 

We're super excited about this new decorating direction, so if you see anything that screams "Valhalla!", please, send it our way!