Back to Bed....

....room makeover!

The duvet cover and shams came in early, but of course, I'm still majorly late in posting the 'finished' results!

When I went shopping for sheets, back in early April, I took the curtain valance with me. I found some sheets on sale, that I thought matched really well--the valance seemed a lot more taupe (greyish) than the beige (pinkish) I was expecting. It also made it hard to find a lightshade because the ivory ones looked bad next to the valance.

Well, I opened the duvet cover, and the sheets are totally wrong. I don't' know how. The duvet is sateen on the top, and the cotton underside matches the sheets pretty well, but the valance is the sateen too. This pictures really doesn't show the two sides of the duvet cover very well, but they are different tones.

If I can steam a hat while it's on my head, I have no issues with ironing a dressed bed! Before:

And after?:Or is that another before shot? How about this, is it nicer?:

Ever wonder why decorators throw afghans artistically over a bed?It's to hide the poor workmanship of foreign child labour (now, to be honest, I have NO CLUE if Sear's uses child labour! but crap, that is sewn badly, even by my standards).

I'm a little disappointed at the size of the duvet cover. The option was a Double/Queen. Even if our mattress wasn't so thick, it still wouldn't come down very far, maybe far enough to just cover the mattress. With the way the room is set up, I pull it over almost all the way to the side you see when you walk in.

We need about 10 more pillows (there's 4 right now), but I don't have enough pillowcases to make them look nice, and there was only a decorator pillow available in this set---not even sheets were available. Maybe I could buy the drapery panels and cut them down to fit the window and use the leftover to make pillows? I think the sale might be over now!

This little fella is the cutest thing! His name is Spoka (two dots over the o) and he's from IKEA. He also comes in red and green, but different shapes. We got one of each colour, then the kids started fighting over who got which one, then Huey read that kids under 3 can't have it and he freaked that Meg would get hurt....so we took the blue one :) However, he has gone back to the girls' room :( They come with a cord and plug and you can use it plugged in, or unplug it to move it around or put closer to the bed, and it lasts pretty much the whole night before gradually dimming. They'll also be great for camping, and even in the truck. They are made of a soft plastic, like those charity/believe rubber bracelets.

They give off a really nice glow (the red one doesn't give off much actual light, but the blue and green ones do). The green one went missing after a recent evening thunderstorm--the kids had the great idea to bring them downstairs in case the power went off! But the worse thing....shortly after we got them, about 5 weeks after doing the bedroom, we were going to meet Nina (the developmental social worker that sees Meg) to go to see the occupational therapist. I suggested we take the blue one to show Nina, because it was brought up in a workshop that blue light is the best for kids that have sleep problems and want a light on. Meg was excited to go get Spoka off the top shelf on Rob's lamp/shelf thing. When she did, she knocked the votive in a glass holder off....which hit the bottom shelf and broke it :( I'm going to replace it; we went to the stain glass shop to see what they could do and they said about $28, and I still have to check the glass/mirror store but I'm just not keen on taking 3 kids to a glass store!!!!

And just cause I still had one spot left on the import pictures page, here's the view of my back yard (pre-pool). This was one or two years ago, I'm not sure (I think it must be two years old because the birdhouse is still there). We have a disagreance on this garden. The tree on the right is a crabapple. Rob is still upset that the new people took out 'his' crapapple at our OLD house. In the middle is a columnar cedar, in front is two box shaped cedars, and towards the back left is a peashrub thingy that I finally hacked down this weekend.

My issue is that the sandbox is directly behind this garden. Can you see it? No, neither can I. And, the garden, and directly around it, is the only flat area. And now, the tall cedar is growing into the crabapple. I love the crabapple. I thought Rob did too. Since we moved in (May 2006) I have been after him to take down the tall cedar and the stupid hedge cedar to open up the view (they don't do much to give privacy when in the hot tub). He keeps refusing and even suggested we take down the crabapple instead because it makes a mess! Argh. I'm the one who spends a lot of time out there, I want to make improvements so we enjoy the yarn more, instead of crouching to walk around and slipping down the slopes. I also want to take out the crooked pine you can see. It's SO crooked, and now is getting in the way of the Maple behind it. And now we have a little pool right there and we'd like a bigger one next year but there is NO more room. Anywhere. It took 5 attempts to get a flat area. Rob says I want to cut down ALL the trees. Not so, at all! I want to remove the poor specimens, improve sight lines, and make better use of the prime 'realty'. I half wish we still had no trees at all, LOL. But I do miss having a cut flower garden!