HODGEPODGE

My process for decorating a room starts with finding one thing; a wallpaper or fabric and then creating a color palette, patterns and accessories around it. This has worked great with our girls baby rooms (Nina's has been featured on Apartment Therapy and Modern Musings), but for some reason with my oldest daughters "grown-up girl" room, I was feeling the flop.

First off, I fell in love with a paint color. A salmon. I still had our enormous vintage gold frame that I turned into a bulletin board with pale yellow linen backing. So the color palette started with those two colors. My daughter loves blue so I added a teal but I had a hard time finding fabrics in my crazy color palette.

Then we got bunkbeds for her to eventually share with her little sister. Big. White. Chunky. We hung onto some of our functional, modern, white IKEA pieces like the book shelf, chair and light. So... no real theme, crazy color palette... I was trying to salvage items from her baby room and I just couldn't make it work. I needed a small wall shelf for all of our Friends With You toys. I painted it teal to see if that helped tie in the colors.

I'll tell you what, the room is a hodgepodge of randomness and it's driving me crazy. After my husband did some work with San Francisco's Lab Partners they gave him an adorable calendar with a "festive fleet of flying contraptions". Then I bought this super cute handmade balloon by Zoe Howard Jacobson (the one with the face). So I focused on A Day at the Fair theme. I made two other hot air balloons and embraced the crazy color palette I had roped myself into. Teal, salmon and yellow.

For her Christmas present, we created a dress-up closet with a yellow Victorian dresser, a teal floor cushion and a white cloud bookshelf. This whole area is still a work in progress to me. This is why there are no photos, I'm too embarrassed to show what it all looks like now. Plus I hate the blinds. One day, this room will come together. I foresee this happening perhaps when she turns 14? Oi.

Until then, I'll continue to create random bits of fun things that have nothing to do with anything and I'll remind myself that it's ok. This is a kids room, it's meant to be fun and messy and a bit crazy. And then I'll really try to convince myself that there doesn't really need to be a "theme".

Below are the two hot air balloons that I made, and Zoe's cute little balloon that I will forever cherish. Also a robot that I made trying to tie the colors together. This was before the Fair theme. I need to give credit to Abby Snow for her robot design. I swiped it and made about 6 robots over the last couple of years for gifts. Mine are a bit different, but her cute little guys got me started.