Remember this post about our big dining room makeover? I bet you're dying to learn more about my plans for that lovely yellow window. Well, at first I thought it was too gold and not happy enough. I started to paint it a nice, sunshiny yellow instead.
The first paint went on, and my soul smiled at the happiness of the yellow. Halfway through, and my soul began to panic a little at the euphoria of the yellow. I squelched my feelings, but when I hung the window on the wall, the downright banana-ness of it all gave my soul a stroke. Nope. I mixed my original too-dark yellow with my new YELLOW!! yellow and got something nice and mellow-yellow. Which, in pictures, and probably most people's memory, is basically the old color all over again. What are you gonna do.
The first paint went on, and my soul smiled at the happiness of the yellow. Halfway through, and my soul began to panic a little at the euphoria of the yellow. I squelched my feelings, but when I hung the window on the wall, the downright banana-ness of it all gave my soul a stroke. Nope. I mixed my original too-dark yellow with my new YELLOW!! yellow and got something nice and mellow-yellow. Which, in pictures, and probably most people's memory, is basically the old color all over again. What are you gonna do.
Mikayla agrees about the yellow, obviously. YOWSA!!
So we are basically here now, with a much toned-down version of the yellow above:
It looks lovely, but not quite finished. My hope is to add some touches to soften the look of it all and coordinate the dining room with our living room, since the space is open. Plan A for the window was to create an elegant wreath made out of pages from an old book. Once I got started, though, it looked like someone was just vaguely crinkling pieces of paper and pinning them randomly onto a big circle. Probably because that's exactly what I was doing. It looked a lot like a bad Kentucky Derby fascinator, I'll be honest. All you really need to know is it quickly spiraled into a whole a lot of ain't going to happen. So we are basically here now, with a much toned-down version of the yellow above:
Lovely idea, right? You don't even want to know how mine looked. On top of the sad appearance of my wreath, the straight pins I bought had teeny tiny heads and poked my fingers AND the papers pulled right off of them if I so much as looked at one sideways. I didn't make it past about five pages pinned onto my wreath before scrapping the whole thing. No, it wouldn't have gotten any better if I'd stuck with it.
I returned that failed experiment to Hobby Lobby, and left there with much better odds of success. So far, Plan B seems way more coherent and better thought through, for the simple reason that I didn't have my three small children with me as I navigated the glass-infested aisles of Hobby Lobby. Now that is a gauntlet if ever there was one. Have you ever tried to simultaneously brainstorm, visualize, make good shopping choices, and herd small children away from numerous breakable objects? It was a disaster waiting to happen, but we made it, albeit with a terrible project design. Bonus: my children only panicked twice thinking that I left them at the store. I guess the million repetitions of "mommy's going this way, please keep walking, I'm turning the corner, mommy's going this way," just weren't quite enough.
My method for putting the wreath together was to shove the stems from my fake flowers into the grapevine wreath and wiggle as needed, and then kind of bend the bendy parts into the wreath so they didn't stick out funny. It was highly technical and precise. The ribbon was added as an afterthought for balance, and to tie this in with my bulletin board, which will feature the same gold ribbon. I hung the wreath by driving two small nails through the ribbon into the top of the window, while praying that it was centered on the first try because NAILS. And you should have seen me trying to hang the whole thing back up while avoiding wreath shards and not crushing the flowers. The picture might look Pinteresty, but we all know the truth: behind every pretty wreath stands a bedraggled lady covered in craft debris and hoping it doesn't crash to the floor.
Also, I strategically moved all of my dining room mess out of the window reflection. I kept lining up the photo and going "phooey, you can see the Hobby Lobby bag!" "oh no, now there's me!" "oops, is that a half-eaten banana?" I didn't move the sippy cup because I am so into showing you (carefully censored portions of) my reality.
I'm purposely withholding the view of the whole wall, because I want to blog each piece and then do a big reveal at the end. Doesn't that sound like fun/a lot of waiting/slightly vain? Joann Fabrics is calling my name next week, and then I should have the next phase of the makeover ready to show you. Unless I get antsy and come up with a project in the meantime, but probably not. Nope, that's not likely at all....
Anyway, so there I was on my return trip to Hobby Lobby (by myself!!! It felt much like twirling carefree through a feminine product commercial.) in hope of finding awesome ribbon to hang my wreath. Me: Gee, I wonder what cute ribbons Hobby Lobby has today. Hobby lobby: I hope you like chevron! Or maybe this medallion print in every color of the rainbow. Which, I don't hate Chevron, but it is so stinking trendy that I fear my wreath will look dated by September. No offense, but I hope to not redecorate my dining room again any time soon. Wait, who am I kidding? This is the girl who waited for her husband to leave town, and then promptly painted a piece of furniture, a window, a frame, and a vase, and completely rearranged the dining room. I dunno, maybe it is kind of like me to get bored with a space?
My revamped idea consists of a grapevine wreath, three nearly-white burlap dahlias (some of my favorite flowers!), a similar burlap rose, yellow lilies, gray twill ribbon and coordinating yellow grosgrain ribbon. This was to hang from my yellow ochre window frame, so the yellow lilies and ribbon were to be a pop of coordinating color, whereas the brown and white of the wreath and flowers would be the focal point. The gray ribbon for hanging will hopefully tie it in with our eventual gray living room walls, and the gray in my eventual bulletin board cover. Lots of unfinished projects right now. I don't know how I sleep at night.
Speaking of unfinished projects and lack of closure, how long do you think I can make this post without showing you my completed wreath?
Voila!
My revamped idea consists of a grapevine wreath, three nearly-white burlap dahlias (some of my favorite flowers!), a similar burlap rose, yellow lilies, gray twill ribbon and coordinating yellow grosgrain ribbon. This was to hang from my yellow ochre window frame, so the yellow lilies and ribbon were to be a pop of coordinating color, whereas the brown and white of the wreath and flowers would be the focal point. The gray ribbon for hanging will hopefully tie it in with our eventual gray living room walls, and the gray in my eventual bulletin board cover. Lots of unfinished projects right now. I don't know how I sleep at night.
Speaking of unfinished projects and lack of closure, how long do you think I can make this post without showing you my completed wreath?
Voila!
My method for putting the wreath together was to shove the stems from my fake flowers into the grapevine wreath and wiggle as needed, and then kind of bend the bendy parts into the wreath so they didn't stick out funny. It was highly technical and precise. The ribbon was added as an afterthought for balance, and to tie this in with my bulletin board, which will feature the same gold ribbon. I hung the wreath by driving two small nails through the ribbon into the top of the window, while praying that it was centered on the first try because NAILS. And you should have seen me trying to hang the whole thing back up while avoiding wreath shards and not crushing the flowers. The picture might look Pinteresty, but we all know the truth: behind every pretty wreath stands a bedraggled lady covered in craft debris and hoping it doesn't crash to the floor.
Also, I strategically moved all of my dining room mess out of the window reflection. I kept lining up the photo and going "phooey, you can see the Hobby Lobby bag!" "oh no, now there's me!" "oops, is that a half-eaten banana?" I didn't move the sippy cup because I am so into showing you (carefully censored portions of) my reality.
I'm purposely withholding the view of the whole wall, because I want to blog each piece and then do a big reveal at the end. Doesn't that sound like fun/a lot of waiting/slightly vain? Joann Fabrics is calling my name next week, and then I should have the next phase of the makeover ready to show you. Unless I get antsy and come up with a project in the meantime, but probably not. Nope, that's not likely at all....
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