Decorating

Finally! I'm nearly done with the writing room redecoration. When the mothers were here, they mixed their own paint color and did a fantastic job on the room. It went from being blah white to a soothing collection of blue and blue-green shades that really works to give the room some needed personality. Leaving the pillars white was a stroke of genius I stole from my friend S; it not only breaks up the room a bit, keeping it from looking monotonous, but also helps disguise the fact that we mixed a new batch of paint in a slightly different shade for the larger walls. (Also, you can see how neatly I cleaned up my massive work desk for the picture! It hardly ever looks like this. :)



On our honeymoon in Italy, I picked up a few children's books with the express intention of tearing them to shreds. The four framed portraits are from "The Secret Lives of Princesses" by Philippe Lechemeier and Rebecca Dautremer. She's an amazing illustrator!



My mother hauled the frames from the US (hint to expats, frames are absurd here and not great quality unless you have them made) and I specially ordered the mats to fit the book pages. I can't remember how much it cost, total, but as art, it was fairly reasonable. Plus, I still have lots of other pages to use for scrapbooking, more framing down the road, etc...



I'm on the lookout for wall decals in floating leaves and alphabet letters, to match the themes in two of the pictures and sort of tie things together, as right now, I feel like the wall on this side looks pretty bare:



The guarda-roupa's previous curtains were faded navy paper that had turned lilac over the years. I ripped them out and replaced them with these, made from some great African fabric my friend, fellow blogger, artist and writer Ali gave me a few years ago. I'd been draping it over a chest in the room for a while, but decided that its bright and cheery pattern needed to be better showcased. When we move, I'll make narrow bolster pillows, probably, out of the strips.



Here's a closeup of some of the clutter on the bookshelf, which is packed with writing resources, procrastination novels and old art song and opera books. The fish is Brazilian, just a fun little critter that I found at an outing one weekend with Vance.



I still need curtains for the window as I've got a sheet clothespinned to the window frame for the time being. My mother has promised to help me sew them...hopefully that project won't entail the screaming and crying that it did back when I was forcibly enrolled in 4-H sewing projects!

What do you think?