Our Bedroom, in the Beginning

I said I would share our DIY adventures in our bedroom, and I thought I'd start by sharing what our bedroom looked like when we started. First of all, above you can see what it looked like just over three years ago when my husband did the walk-through before we bought it. The previous owners used the master bedroom as an office. That explains the bookshelf wallpaper border. There's really no explanation for the amount of stuff in there. It looked marginally better when we came to see it while house hunting, but I'm afraid at least one of the ladies we bought it from had issues with compulsive hoarding. I think you could say at this point the bedroom was dark and without form.

Below is a picture taken from the same angle in April of this year. This is taken from the door of the bedroom.  We had made a few changes, but besides new windows, they're pretty minor. The valance didn't stay with the house. We took down the existing mini-blinds and hung the curtains when we added these. At that point I took down the border on the wall with the windows. Other than that we had put up some pictures, and I purchased a bunch of fabric, some of which I used to make covers for the rocking chair. We also installed the light fixture on the fan. It's not beautiful, but it's functional. You can see we had also tested our new paint colors on the wall.

 
The house was built in 1989, and this was the original carpeting. When we bought the house we had bamboo floors installed in kitchen, great room, and hallway. James steam cleaned the carpeting in the bedrooms before we moved in, and we planned to put in new floors in the bedrooms the next year. But James's job situation was in flux that year, so we waited. Then the next summer we decided it would be better to take advantage of the tax rebates and install new windows. So now here we are three years later, and we are so excited to be getting rid of the grungy 20+ year old carpeting in the bedrooms. It may look unobjectionable in that picture, but trust me, it was in bad shape.  We had decided to wait to paint this room until we put in the new flooring, not realizing it would be such a long wait. Our bedroom has looked pretty much like this most of the time we've lived here.

Here are a few more angles. In the picture below, the doorway is just outside the frame on the right.

  

Around the corner below you can see the edge of door to the closet. Behind the wall with the bookcases is the bathroom.  I'll share pictures of the closet and bathroom and the projects going on in those areas another day.

 

Our bedroom was reasonably tidy in these pictures, but these before pictures also keep it pretty real with the clutter on top of the bookcases and laundry baskets. We've got plans to address those things after we put everything back together. The bedroom is a good size, which is one of the reasons we chose this house. We thought it had a lot of potential. We've made a lot of progress toward realizing that potential now. Next time, I'll talk about the first project I completed, which was taking down the rest of the border. 

21 Day Challenge, Day 21: Work It

Today is the last day of the Challenge! Wow, I can't believe I made it through the whole thing and participated every day. It was a great experience to think of my clothes as an outlet for creativity, and to stretch myself by trying new things with my clothing. I think it helped me get a better feel for my own style, and I hope to carry some of what I learned with me. Also it was great to take on a project that required some blogging discipline and actually complete it. I'm pretty excited about that, and another thing I hope to do is carry that blogging energy forward to new topics (the bedroom DIY projects will get talked about, for sure). Also, it was really fun to see all the outfits of the other ladies, check out their interpretations of the prompts, and get some some feedback about my efforts. I will add a few new blogs to my reader. As positive as the experience has been, I'm kind of glad it's over. I'll be glad to have a little more free time to work on other things. Blogging every single day is a little too much for me.  We'll see what kind of pattern I'll fall into with it now.  



The final prompt was to put together a great outfit showcasing what we've learned. This dress has been hanging in my closet for a year, and I've never worn it before. After I got it, I washed it, as you do. But then it needed ironing, and it's linen. And the skirt is super full with a ton of those panels. So I knew it was going to take for-ev-er to iron. And it did. An hour. It took a whole hour. I listened to an entire disk of Neil Diamond's greatest hits while ironing this dress. But I'm glad I did it. Closet orphan, no more. I love the dress, and I think in the future I might have it dry-cleaned. :) But it definitely illustrated one of the main things I learned from this challenge. Looking put together and styled requires a lot of ironing! I think I ironed at least one thing for 21 out of 22 outfits. That is a crazy high percentage for me, since my most common method of choosing outfits is to go for whatever doesn't need ironed. This outfit also showcases my new-found love for belts, layering, and statement jewelry. Right now I can only make the one statement, but that is something I plan to work on. 


And I said 22 outfits because after church today we headed to the toe of the state to spend some time with my family over Labor Day weekend. My husband had to be here for the annual family fantasy football draft, and I tagged along to hang out with my grandmother, aunts and cousins. I changed into something a little more comfortable and appropriate for that part of our agenda. I'm sharing this outfit too, because another thing I learned was to take as much trouble with your casual, hanging out with family or Saturday running errands outfits as you do with your go to church or go to work looks. Although I admit, my outfit for tomorrow involved far less thought. I even forgot to pack shoes for it. Hopefully I'll do a little better at applying what I've learned in the future. It was a really fun ride. Thanks to Kayla for hosting this virtual shindig. Thanks to everyone who has put in a kind word and indulged me in this exercise, and thanks to my husband for taking my picture every day without complaint or mockery.

Church--Dress:Calvin Klein, TJ Maxx; Sweater: DKNY, thrifted; Shoes: Target, Necklace: made by me, beads from Michael's

Casual--Shirt: Clio, hand me down; Sweater: see above; Shorts:Target; Shoes: Liz Claiborne, thrifted; headband: belt from dress

21 Day Challenge, Day 20: Sunday Shoes.

I really don't have much delineation between church shoes and everyday shoes. If anything, I tend to wear more comfortable shoes for church, since it involves a lot of standing, whereas at work I spend most of my day sitting at my desk with my shoes kicked off. I do admit, I tend to go for the most casual footwear on Saturdays. Today we were supposed to pull out the fancy kicks. But it was the first Saturday of the month. You may think this has nothing to do with fancy shoes, but that's where you'd be wrong. On the first Saturday of the month the Indianapolis area Goodwill stores have their storewide 50% off sale. I go to the two closest Goodwill stores, which takes several hours if I am looking for clothes. Consequently, I just wasn't going to go for any fancy heels today. I decided to take the Sunday Shoes thing literally, and I wore the comfy wedges I wore the first Sunday of the challenge. And I decided to give the neutral with a pop of color thing another go, since I wasn't thrilled with my outfit for that prompt. I'm pretty pleased with this one. And it wasn't even bad for trying on clothes. I just left the scarf pinned and slipped it off over my head.



Here is my haul for the day. I got all this for less than $20. I bought a pair of wide leg khakis, my first pair of skinny jeans, a patterned coral tunic, stretchy striped Tee, cabled coral sweater, pale pink cashmere, a belt, and some navy wedges. I spent longer than usual today, since I don't generally bother to look at the patterned shirts. I had never looked at the belts before, either. They are only 50 cents on half price day! The challenge has definitely given me a new eye.

21 Day Challenge, Day 19: Wear Something On Your Head

Wearing a scarf headband seemed like an easy way to meet today's prompt: wear some kind of head accessory. I don't think I've ever worn a scarf like this before, and when I tried it out, I thought it seemed very 1950s. I went with that idea, and rolled up my jeans, which was a smart move since it was 95 here today. Classic Keds or saddle shoes would have suited the theme, but I don't have any, so ballet flats seemed like the way to go. Here I am in my fave green shoes again, since they are my only ballet flats. I've got to say, wearing three different shades of green kind of hurt my brain. I felt ready to whip off my scarf to start a drag race, but I can't quite decide if the greens worked or not. I'm glad the challenge is taking me out of my comfort zone, though.

Scarf: gift from my Mom from India; Shirt: hand me down; Shoes and jeans: thrifted

21 Day Challenge, Day 18: Statement Jewelry

I was really excited about my outfit for today's challenge. I previously didn't own anything you could really call statement jewelry, unless that statement was a very subtle one. But last week I wore this T-shirt on jazz up your jeans day, and I just didn't think it was jazzy enough. I really wanted it to have some more pops of red, so when I saw that today was statement jewelry day, I knew I wanted a chunky red necklace. I didn't have a lot of time to be combing stores looking for something, so I just went to Michael's. They have a big bead selection, and they were having a sale. I bought three packs of these beads and some clear elastic cord. The packs of beads were about 5.60 each, and the cord was 2.50, so the necklace came out to about $20. Frankly, that was pretty painful to my cheapskate self, since I've been buying all my clothes at thrift stores. Luckily, I was returning some stuff I didn't need for a different project, so even with the 1.92 for 2 yards of ribbon for my belt, I only had to fork over about six bucks.

I have to say, I actually do think it was money well spent. I love the necklace, and I got tons of compliments on my outfit at work today. Since we'll be promoting Geek the Library through the spring, I'll be wearing this shirt a lot. I like having the red necklace to wear with this shirt, since I tend to look like death warmed over when I wear black next to my face. I think this necklace will also look great with turquoise. Plus it will be fun to wear at Christmas time. So, no regrets. I still have plenty of elastic cord, so I will probably make some more jewelry, too. Thanks to the 21 Day Challenge I will be checking thrift stores for jewelry and belts in the future.

I'd like to note that I wore my remix piece for the fourth time today. See the other looks here, here, and here. All four outfits were combinations I'd never worn before, and I thought they were pretty different looks. The neutral one was kind of blah, (too much neutral, not enough pop) but I really liked the others. I'd say overall the remix project was a success. I might try some starch when ironing this skirt in the future since it tends to get really wrinkly by the end of the day. The remix was a very fun and useful challenge.

Finally, I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year! It's a time of endings and new beginnings, and we are very nearly to the end of the 21 Day Challenge. I have had a great time, learned a lot, and enjoyed meeting some new people.

T-shirt: www.geekthelibrary.org ; Skirt: Target; Shoes: Keds; Belt:grosgrain ribbon, Michaels; Necklace: I made it, beads from Michaels