New Bedding!

It is so windy out today I feel like the house is going to blow down!  I would love to should go outside and spray paint numbers onto the galvanized steel buckets and the milk pail I thrifted recently, but I fear I would end up with more paint on me or the house than anything else!  Oh well, maybe next week once the front moves through!  I really shouldn't complain about the wind though, I so missed it when we were living in South Carolina!  They thought 20mph winds were crazy; we have gust over 40mph right now and it's not too bad!  Ok, anyways, onto the bedding.

I shared a picture of my bedroom recently here, and if you saw it you probably noticed the lack of a bedspread/quilt/duvet/anything other than a few blankets on the bed!  Well, since we are hot-natured and it was the summer time, that was about all we needed on any particular night.  I have been toying with the idea of buying a duvet cover and a down duvet for awhile now.  I found some really reasonable prices for down duvets on Overstock.com and I fell in love with a duvet cover from Urban Outfitters, but for at least $150 total, I just couldn't justify it.  I know, bedding is important (you spend 1/3 of your day there!) and maybe I'm just cheap, but I couldn't fork it over.  So, I compromised.

Here's the duvet cover that I fell in love with:

Nevermind, they apparently don't
even have the yellow one anymore
because it was just that cool.

So, I realize the yellow wouldn't be the best math with our green chairs, but the blue version was almost as fun and had all of the colors I was looking for: blue, yellow, green, coral.

Isn't it so pretty?  Ok, so at $109 for a king size it was just too pricey.  We have a queen bed, but I thought a king size would help with cover stealing issues!  Well, luckily for me I was out estate-saling and clearance-rack-perusing and I came up with an alternative.  You know I love a good bargain.  First, I stopped at a gorgeous estate sale where there were amazing antique chairs and painting and rugs and and....  It was just such a fun house, but soooo pricey!  I ended up getting a few things including this tablecloth.  Yes, I realize a table cloth is not bedding, but it had a fun pattern and great colors and I loved it!  

But, you don't get to see it quite yet because that would ruin the surprise.  Ok, so after that fun excursion, I headed to Target and found a huge selection of bedding for 75% off!  Woohoo!  That stuff gets me EXCITED!  So, I picked up a few things (1 quilt, 1 duvet cover, 1 coverlet, 1 sheet set, about 5 throw pillows, 6 small area rugs, and I think that's it).  Ok, I knew I was going to return whatever didn't work, so I overbought things since I wanted to see how a few options looked in the house. 

Here are the quilt ($25) and duvet cover ($17.50).  I got.  I apparently forgot to take a picture of the coverlet.

I was afraid the quilt might be a little too girly for my husband, but since he liked my Urban Outfitters selection, I figured I was ok.  As for the duvet cover, I did not want the bland beige look, but thought it could be fun to dye it a nice blue tone since it was 100% cotton.  So, up next was a test run on the bed.  First up, the quilt.

I liked how calming it looked on the bed, but wanted to go through all of my options.  I didn't get the duvet cover out because the more I thought about it, the more I figured a solid duvet cover would be hard to keep wrinkle free (I am not a huge iron-er!) so, I just skipped that.  You can get an idea of how it would have looked from this old picture with just our sheets (or you might have seen it while I was rearranging furniture, here), which are nearly the same color, even though I would have dyed the duvet cover.

Forgive the mess!  It was cold the night before, so I have quite the assortment of blankets out!

Up next was the coverlet.  And, here is your first glance at the estate sale tablecloth I mentioned.

This one looked ok, but I was not sold.  I didn't totally love the stripes, and when I got under it, it was just too hot (the filling was polyester, so it didn't breathe well).  And, it didn't work very well with my new tablecloth end-of-the-bed-throw.

Even though the coverlet was a king size and the quilt was just a full/queen, the quilt won out.  It blended in so nicely with the tablecloth, which in turn blended in great with my velvet green chairs on the other side of the room.

Now, I kept trying different pillow arrangements trying to get that magazine spread look, but it's harder than it seems!  I didn't like the dark blue, so I took that out.  And got the following:

 Then I thought the pink wasn't totally working so I took that out and ended up with this:

And I like it!  I made those small pillow covers myself and I think they pull everything together including the quilt, tablecloth, and green velvet chairs (their usual home).  Now, to figure out what to do with those curtains.  Up next, the sheet set I bought.  Since upgrading to a queen size mattress, we haven't had a spare sheet set, so I got these on sale at Target (on top of a 20% off coupon), for about $40.  I bought a higher thread count sheet set from Target previously and we fell in love with the softness compared to those cheapy Walmart sheets and I figured 20 bucks off was a pretty good deal for the set.  I wanted something to go with the quilt, but not match outright, so I went with a damask sheet set.  Here they are with one of my pillows and the tablecloth on top of the quilt so you can get and idea of how they go together.  I'm liking it.

Next up, an awesome rug that I had been looking at every time I passed the Target rug aisle.  It was smaller than the one I wanted, but since it was 75% off, I thought I would at least give it a try to see if it worked in the room.  Sadly, it didn't.  :(  Oh well, I brought it back to Target so someone else can enjoy it.  It was just too dark/rust colored to go with the pinky coral I had going on.

Here's a close up so you can see that, though beautiful, it really doesn't work at all.

I even tried it down in our basement, but it still didn't quite work.

So, back to Target it went.  Now, I've got the bedding down, but I'm still working on a paint color for our bedroom.  I had originally wanted a grey, but now that the quilt is on our bed, I'm not sure it works.  I had originally chosen the colors because they went with our natural wood trim, specifically the bottom right color was the front runner (Pebble by Glidden).  But, now it just seems like its too close to the bedspread color and just isn't working.  I'm thinking maybe one of the darker grays on the top right paint card (third from bottom) but I'm afraid it will be too dark!  I should probably just get a sample, slap it on the walls and see, the worst that can happen is I hate it and have to paint over it, right?  Or maybe I'll just paint a huge canvas in that color and move it around to see what it looks like in different parts of the room (a tip I learned from www.mariakillam.com I believe, she has some great insights on color!).  Well, at least the room is evolving, even if it is ever so slowly!  Anyone out there jumping on the grey bandwagon?  So far, I've just spray painted a few accessories the "trendy" color.  Ok, now enough procrastinating.  I'm off to finish my online accounting class videos for the week!