my bedroom makeover / it's finished!

i am so excited to share the pictures from our bedroom (and my whole family is ready for me to be done talking about it- they keep telling me i'm putting way to much thought in to the smallest room ever!). but, this small room is home for the next few months and i want it to feel like it. plus, whatever i get for this room will carry over to our next place (until i get sick of everything again, of course). anyways, sorry if i overload you on pictures of my room- they all looked so awesome it was hard to trim them back.

{ps. find the before pictures here}

the desk area:

we started out with this same desk top from ikea, but in the smaller size. then we started buying the pieces to add to it (the drawers and shelf), and realized we needed the bigger desk. i got the glossy table top- which was totally worth the extra ten dollars. we painted the legs and brackets gold (with spray paint from home depot). i found that amazing chair at a thrift store and covered it with blue velvet that i got at a fabric store in san diego. most of the desk accessories are from target's clearance sections from the past couple of months (it's dangerous living only 1 minute away from target). 

hanging above the desk is my pendant from world market that i got from my bridal shower and still love. it is combined with my west elm terrarium and ikea planter (that i may have macramé-d myself- i'm super craftsy these days). next to the desk are ikea shelves with some of our collection of books. the curtains are actually shower curtains from west elm (we got them for our old house and still love them!)

the bed:

so we used our bed frame that we got from west elm when we first got married, but added a headboard. somehow when we went out to a sketch storage unit in santee with our friend, we found this amazing headboard and the guy sold it to us for $20! i was so excited. i was originally wood, and apparently a very funky wood because every time we tried to spray paint or just paint it little bubbles would come up. so jarman painted, sanded, and repainted that baby about 5 times. he was so sweet- he promised he would fix it as many times as he needed to for me to like it. and i love how it turned out. we had our gold dots on the wall made, and i spaced them 6 inches apart. the painting above the bed is from my old house, and was from home goods.

i love my art wall next to the bed so much. i get to lay in bed and look at all of my favorite art and maps of some of the places jarman and i have lived. i got most of the frames from ikea and target- i will probably do a whole post on the wall at some point. i have another ikea shelf that acts as my nightstand. we don't have enough room to scooch the bed over because our bed is so dang big (we can't and will never give up our king bed). i have my old urban outfitters lamp on the shelf where i charge my phone and computer at night. 

my emerald green sheets were from ross (i love them but you get what you pay for, they already have a hole in them). i got the grey blanket at the end on super clearance at west elm ($20- i didn't even want a blanket down there but how could i pass it up!). i love my nate berkus geometric duvet cover from target oh so much. i got all of those serena and lily pillows at home goods, which were another thing that i wasn't planning to buy- but how could i pass up sequined gold and silver pillows. i lucked out in my shopping for this room!

the dresser (and rest of the room):

you may recognize my dresser from my wedding. we painted it chartreuse so that it could be one of the only things that was my true wedding color (it was before it became the most popular color ever!). we skipped the priming/sanding so it is chipping super badly. and, it is still missing the drawer that my dad threw away. i still love it though. i have an ikea mirror and target light for my 'dressing station'. i stole that little geometric wooden stool from my mom.

lets just take a minute to talk about that necklace holder. this was my biggest splurge on the room. it is from west elm and is possibly the most amazing thing i have ever seen. more amazing than justin timberlake's future sex love sounds concert. i don't even know what else to say.

my lamp is vintage from my aunt, so is the mirror tray. all of the jewelry is my own. looking the other way you can see my teeny tiny closet. we took the doors off to make a little more room. i put up my old world market curtains to cover the clutter.

seriously though, i love my room (like you can't tell). i ask jarman every morning if he is so excited to wake up in such a cute room? he usually is. thanks to jarman for a. putting up with all my crap (how much i can talk about the tiniest little things), and b. putting up all my crap (building the desk, painting the room, hanging all my shelves and rods). also thank you mom for helping me with all the little details. she (literally) nailed the art wall and the desk area.

bridal shower gift idea / tressa's bedroom makeover

my mom came up with the best idea for bridal showers. rather than having everyone bring random gifts (and subsequently receiving twenty cookie sheets), why not have guests pitch in for the couples first master bedroom? she first tested this idea out at my bridal shower, and it really was so awesome. we had an entire bedroom curated and designed to fit our tastes. this also makes it easier for bridal shower guests: rather than shopping they can just give cash to the decorator and put their name on the card at the end. we did this again for tressa's shower and it was so much fun to be on the giving (shopping) end. i loved designing her room. 

(if you're wondering how we pulled this off logistically: we send out an evite and said to contact bobette about the group gift. people texted/emailed her if they wanted to contribute money and how much. they brought us the money up until the shower and we shopped using the money we would eventually collect. we set the bedroom up in one of the rooms of our house so that she could see the entire thing put together!)

included in her bedroom are: the curtains, lamps, end tables, all of the bedding (duvet, blanket, sheets and throw pillows), the bench, the rug at the end of the bed, the art, and that awesome sunburst mirror (from walmart!).

bedroom makeover / before's and progress

jarman and i just finished a long day of getting crap done in our room. it is looking so good! not everything is finished, but i wanted to share what our room looked like before and how far we have come! the walls were brown which made the room seem dark and small, especially with only on window. we used to have a brown duvet and chartreuse sheets. pretty much all of the furniture will stay in the same places, and we are keeping all of it, so we are just working on making everything look prettier! (all of these pictures were taken with an iphone, and most of them were late at night, sorry for the crappy quality!)

this panorama picture shows the layout of the room (it is taken from the door). our massive king bed takes up lots of the space, but we wouldn't trade it for the world. to the left of the bed is our desk and bookshelf. at the end of the bed is our dresser and our tv hangs above.

my mom and sisters decorated our room for christmas- complete with our own adorable and real christmas tree. she also got us some gold polka dot vinyl decals for the wall, and lots of other cute christmassy items.

since then, we have painted the walls...

done lots of (clearance) shopping...

tried lots of different bedding combinations...

bought and painted a vintage headboard

curated lots of art...

and have built, organized, and hung lots of things.

that last picture is how the room looked before we went to bed. you don't even know how excited i am to have desk drawers!

now all we need to do i finish/install the headboard, hang all of the art, work on more organization, and style everything!

bedroom makeover part 2 / shopping list

this week we are painting our room (martha stewart's nimbus grey), and shopping. things are happening people and it's really exciting! i'm hoping to have final pictures by the end of next week, but who knows. i tried to add the colors that will be in the room in my little collage, but i realized those are only the colors on my bed, there are a few more that will be in the room too. it may sound busy but i think it will pull together nicely!

1. navy diamond duvet cover- i already bought this and am loving it on my bed! it isn't online any more but i have seen tons of them in stores, sometimes you need to target hop to get what you want. and it's on sale for $60. score. 

2. pink tufted ottoman- this is freaking adorable. i haven't found it in any of the stores we have gone to, but i'm still searching. there is a chance i may end up using an ottoman i already have. this will be going at the end of my bed by the tall mirror, so that i can have a place to lay clothes while i try things on, or if i need a break, you know. i also need something that i can use to climb up in my closet in, because roll-y chairs and me are a lethal combination.

3. desk drawers / more storage- right now we just have the linnmon desk from ikea, with no drawers. it isn't a very big workspace, so we don't like to have much on top, and we need a place to keep all of our important things (cameras, laptops, work stuff etc.). in a perfect world i would also be getting a whole closet kit, but the clothes are hidden behind curtains and what we currently have is working fine. i don't want to invest the money into it right now.

4. desk chair- jarman and i have looked for a desk chair that we both like since we have been married, and this is the only one we can agree on. the $200 price tag makes us hesitate a bit though. we may keep looking for a while, this isn't urgent. we will definitely need one while jarman is in law school. he talks about how amazing his workspace will be a lot. it's the only space in the house he really cares about having just perfect.

5. mirror- we have not one mirror in our room, and no full length mirror in our bathroom. it is killing me. this is a must.

6. art prints / frames- i have been purchasing prints and postcards from museums, so i'm planning to frame them and make an awesome art wall of things that i have actually seen and like. i also might include some of my photographs. i am very excited and planning on adding a lot of color (as if i need any more)  with this project.

bedroom makeover part 1 / the pinspiration

just because we are living with my in-laws doesn't mean we can't have an awesome room. i am so excited to re-do our bedroom. we will be keeping a lot of our old stuff, but will be refreshing with some new things too. currently the room is brown, we have brown bedding, and not great lighting. it is rather dark. we are starting this week by painting the room a very light grey, to make it more fresh and airy. as much as i love the aesthetic of all white rooms, i can't bring myself to do it. i don't know why, i think it would feel unfinished to me. light grey will be perfect. 

i have already purchased my new duvet cover - it is a nate berkus one from target. it has a navy blue geometric pattern (i will share a picture of it in my next post). i also have new emerald sheets on my bed. along with those two colors, i have a chartreuse dresser and some patterned curtains. overall the room will be greens and blues and grays, with pops of pink and bright art. the pictures below may seem a little disjointed and unrelated, but i will explain it all. 

so these first few pictures show bed inspiration/color scheme. i have the navy and white duvet, with green sheets. i want to get a white blanket (or something simple, somehow actually buying all white things is hard. i'm a color/pattern lover, what can i say?). i already have a pink pillow, but i want a few more. i love the large white pillows, i need to find some pillow cases like that.

my mom decorated my room for christmas with gold dot decals, i am obsessed with them. we will be replacing them once we have the room painted. i'm thinking we may do the dots above the dresser/where the tv is, but we shall see.

our bedroom also serves as our mini office. we have a small desk that needs organizing, but also to be mostly clear of 'things'. i think some sort of cart/drawers will go underneath. of course we will have an art wall- i have lots of prints i have collected and am working on framing/curating them.

i will be sharing a 'shopping list' next of all of the things we need to buy for the room, and where i plan to get them. i can't wait to get this thing done!