As Seen On

Well, the blog has certainly seen a flurry of new visitors in the past few days.  Last week, on a whim, I quickly submitted my tutorial to Apartment Therapy.  They liked it and posted a write-up two days later.

For the record, I had nothing to do with what they wrote.  I liked the angle they chose, but they posted the wrong Besta shelf!  Now,  if you're going to submit anything to Apartment Therapy, you have to have thick skin because the comments and opinions can be somewhat brutal.  Thankfully I've never had a negative comment before, but not this time.  But it wasn't my fault.  The culprit was the silly shelf that they posted at the top.  Anyway, it made for some interesting reading.  Apartment Therapy readers really take other peoples' safety seriously.  People thought I was being negligent for building a banquette out of something so obviously flimsy.  Let me tell you, I'm no dummy and I did my research.  The units I used are a lot stronger than the one pictured.  Anyway, that's by-the-by.  On the most part, once I had straightened out the confusion on the base units, people seemed to like my banquette.

The next day it was featured on Centsational Girl in the BOTB (Best of the Blogosphere) series, and has garnered some more positive reviews!  Yay!  You can see that link here.

And for all of you wondering whether it is strong enough to hold adults, here it is in action.

It was out semi-annual "tour de tapas".  We had 10 people seated around that table (6 on the banquette), and I can happily say the bench did not collapse!

And here was what was happening on the other side of the room. 

Cheers!

Room for Color 2013

So I entered Apartment Therapy's Room for Color Contest again!  Yes, I know, am I just a sucker for punishment or what?  Well, anyway, it doesn't look like I'm going to do nearly as well as I have the past few years.  Unfortunately the photos I submitted don't really show the whole room and quite a few people have called me on it.  I honestly must have been having a brain fart (my son's favorite term) when I submitted the pictures.

So for all the people who have asked in the comments on AT to see more pictures, I hope these help.

You're probably thinking, that's a strange ceiling?  Yes, we have a balcony that looks down from upstairs into this room.  This room, which is the family/living room, is in the middle of the house.

The picture above shows some of the cool original features of the house.  We have 2 massive working pocket doors, and believe me, they come in handy when Roman's banging on the drums.

This window is actually bowed.  I don't know if you can tell in the photo or not, but it was a pain to find a rod for so I had to make one out of pvc pipe.  There's also some original stained glass and leaded glass windows in the house.

And below are the pictures that I submitted to Apartment Therapy.

Here's a snippet of some of the comments I've received so far.

So I hope you'll like it enough to vote!

To vote, go HERE and click on the favorite button which is a heart.  You have to sign in to vote, but Apartment Therapy don't spam you or send you emails unless you ask them to.

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!

Shameless Plea to Vote for Me!

Yes, you know I can't resist a good competition.  No it's not the time of the year for Apartment Therapy's Room for Color, but it is another Apartment Therapy competition.  This time it's solely based on bedrooms.  And seeing as I just did a mini-makeover of mine, I thought I'd enter.

I'm playing major catch-up because the competition has been going for over 2 weeks and my room just got uploaded yesterday.  Nevertheless, I'm doing surprisingly well with over 200 votes and 8th position.  I need to get into the top 4 to win any prize and let me tell you the competition is tough.  I think all of the top 4 deserve to win.  Competition ends April 1st, I think.  So if you could throw a vote my way I'd be ever so grateful ;)

*VOTE FOR MY ROOM here*

P.S  You do have to sign in to vote but Apartment Therapy won't sell your email or spam you, I promise.  You can sign in 3 ways, either with your email, Facebook, or twitter.  Thankyou!!!!

New Dwell Studio Peacock Bedding

One of the duvet sets that I ordered from Layla Grace has arrived.  And I have to admit it, I love it.  It's really changed the look and feel of the room.  I do feel a bit disloyal, because I loved my old duvet so much and it did help me win a design competition.  But the new duvet is so fresh and clean looking.

I decided to see what it would look like with the old throw pillows that went so well with the old duvet.

Guess what?  They don't work.  Even though there's a teeny bit of orange in the pattern of the duvet, it just wasn't enough to tie them together.  Another thing that the throw pillows had in common with the old duvet was a similar pattern.

Here it is with layered with the quilt on top.  Nope, definitely not working.  Before it created a cozy bohemian vibe, this just looks disjointed and messy.

Let's try some different throw pillows.  These are the same design as the other duvet that I ordered by dwell studio.

Much better!  The pillows share lots of design elements with the duvet without it looking matchy matchy.

Spot the difference in the two pictures above.  The one on the right uses my old sheeting which is a light blue moroccan tile design.  The one on the left is much more graphic and punchy.

Here's a picture taken from the same angle with the old bedding, and old bed (obviously).

See what I mean about the patterns of the old duvet matching both patterns in the throw pillows.  Even the shade shares something in common with the flowers on the pillow.

Yep, that confirms it.  I really do like the new bedding better!  It's definitely a lot more sophisticated.  Like I said earlier, I do feel a little sad.  What I had before was definitely more bohemian, and that's what I truly aspire to, but the after is far more serene and sophisticated.  Am I being true to myself, I wonder?  I even removed the blue zigzag rug.

I did manage to recycle the orange bolster, which looks remarkably good on the love seat.  That zig zag is too much though.  Might have to have another go at reupholstering it.  Stay tuned!

What doesn't work as well with the new bedding are the lamp shades.  Their tone is definitely darker than the colors in the duvet.  The darker birds on the throw pillows help somewhat, but not quite.

I ordered this pillow from Anthropologie.  Maybe it will do the trick of tying the shades to the rest of the scheme.  Sometimes you've just got to try things out to see.

What do you think?  (I know the love seat is a little silly there, but I don't have anywhere else to put it.  Maybe I should sell it.)

Apartment Therapy Room for Color Winners

So I didn't win Apartment Therapy's Room for Color Contest 2012. But I did come close! I came second in my division. The room that beat me was Allie's "Contrasting Neutrals" Room. The winners are chosen on how many "favorites" they get.

Here's a round-up of how the voting went, and the rooms that made it to the finals in their division.

That's my room above. 2000+ pins, 224 favorites (votes), 49 comments (all positive apart from one person rolling their eyes at my color-coded books!).

Allie's room beat mine to win in the light division. Um, not much to say about this room. And lucky for Allie she found a loop-hole in the voting system (although it's still against the rules).

I like Amit's room probably the best out of the four. It was a little plain, but had the best design in my opinion.

Dana's Room was one of the most controversial hence the large number of comments. People felt that it only won because of her large blog following. But that's not against the rules. What is against the rules is getting people to vote multiple times for your room which one of the finalists had done (this enabled them to win their division).

Kellie's room won the whole contest. I don't think it was really people's favorite judging by the comments. I think it has some nice elements to it, but a tad over designed.

I probably won't enter again next year unless Apartment Therapy changes how the winners are decided, or does a better job of monitoring the voting. The only one that I felt truly merited their win was in the international division. Jane's Room was bold, daring and fun.

Anthropologie Pinned My Room!

I'm so thrilled to know that Anthropologie (my favorite store) liked my music room/library enough to pin it on to one of their inspiration boards.

I think I'm more thrilled about this than when I found out that Katie Couric had pinned my chair!

Don't you just love Pinterest?

Music Room in Action

Doesn't the library/music room look calm and serene here in the photo that I submitted to Apartment Therapy?

Looks can be deceptive.  Here's what it was like two hours ago.

It's the boys performing a new song they wrote last week called "Gumball Machine".  They've composed songs before but that was with the help of their old music teacher.  This one they completely wrote themselves.  I think it's quite catchy.  What do you think?

Those with a keen eye will notice how I managed to store the amps in the bookcase.  Always trying to find design solutions for everyday life.  Now I just need a separate room to store all of Callum's lego models.

And if you like the room, then please do me a favor and vote for it on Apartment Therapy's Room for Color Contest here.  Thanks!

Library/Music Room Update

This room is taking forever to finish!  I think it's because it's such an awkward space.  Everything seems to be in a corner.  Fireplace, piano, chair, drum kit, you name it, it's in a corner!  And having two massive pocket doors and a wall of windows doesn't help.  But I think I'm slowly getting there.  I just hope the family don't buy any more musical instruments because I'm running out of places to put them.  Anyway, a big decision I made last week was to put some doors on the bookcase.  We have way more paperbacks than nice hardcover books, and it was just looking too messy.  Plus now I have somewhere to hide the guitar amps when not in use.

Here it is with the tulip table that I bought a couple of years ago just for this space.  I think it actually looks really pretty, but it's not very practical if you want to open the bookcase doors.  So back upstairs it went.

I'm still considering spray painting the curtain rod gold.  Yes, I know, enough of the gold already!  But I really like the look of brass curtain rods and because the window is bowed, I had to make a curtain rod out of PVC pipe.  I should probably do a tutorial on that one because I'm sure there are many people with bowed windows that don't know what kind of curtain hardware they can use.

I'm not sure about the dead space between the curtain rod and the top of the window frame.  Maybe with the rod painted it won't look so odd to me.  I may even see what it looks like with matchstick blinds, but that again depends on whether I can hang them with the bow.

Roman got a new drum kit for his birthday/christmas.  I swear he chose the finish and wasn't influenced by me at all.  See that boy has good taste.  It's way bigger than his old drum kit, besides being a jazz kit which is smaller than regular kits.  But it still manages to take up the vast majority of the room, especially because he has 4 huge cymbals.  And it is really loud!  Hope the neighbors don't complain.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I'm thinking of entering Apartment Therapy's Room for Color Contest again.  I know, it's just a popularity competition, but I do have fun doing it.  And although this room isn't perfect, I do think it has something unique about it that may appeal to the Apartment Therapy readers.  So wish me luck.