Our nest

I finally took some photos of our nearly-completed bedroom. The only work left in here is to paint the ceiling and trim. The photo above is the master bedroom before we moved in. Those dusty old valances are making me itch just looking at the photo!  We had intended to paint this room a sort of soothing neutral color, but when we stripped away the wallpaper we found a wall that had been a light turquoise. We liked it so well we ended up changing our color plans and painting the walls a deep turquoise instead, inspired by the color that had been on the wall in some previous incarnation.

I used fabric from Joann for the curtains and pillows in here, Legacy Studio's Nestled in Branches. I fell in love with this fabric when we were house-hunting, and once it finally came time to work on our new bedroom I was relieved that they still carried the prints. I bought the whole bolt of the curtain fabric! I still have some left and will probably do a small lap-quilt down the road. I did the pillow shams (as well as a slightly different alternate set so one can be in the laundry, not pictured) in strips of the bird fabrics with some solids as accents. I used a decorative stitch along each seam and binding along the edges. Once they were done I felt like I'd taken what could have been a very simple project (shams made of two pieces of fabric stitched along three sides) and made it needlessly complicated, but I really do like the final product. I also shouldn't discount the enjoyment I got out of stitching the strips!  Life's about the journey, right?

The whimsical bird print against my new white blinds and the new black curtain hardware makes me happy. Those windows wanted to be free of the dusty, stuffy old curtains that must have looked fresh and pretty when they were new, but had long since outlived their moment. Waking up in this room is wonderful!

I needed something on top of our wardrobe, so I combined a metal basket from my mother-in-law's yard sale with a bird intended as yard art to complete our free bird (ha ha) theme in this room.

And this wasn't really intentional, but seemed serendipitous. My grandmother's lamp looked great in the living room of my old house but was having trouble fitting in to any of the spaces we were creating here. Now that everything is put together it looks like I actually created a room just for this lamp. I don't get much into emotional attachment to objects, but it is nice when an object I love in its own right, like this lamp, also shares with me the memory of my grandparents' living room where it shed light on many family moments over many years. My paternal grandparents died during my two pregnancies (Grandpa during Dorothy's, Grandma during Worth's), and now their lamp shines on the baptism portraits of my beautiful kids. I think they would have liked that.