Pollyanna-ing

My life has been going pretty well lately. I have great friends and a wonderful family. My roommates are pretty sweet. My house is pretty much all settled into (we hosted our first party last week!). I've lost ten pounds. I still have my job (not that I was really ever close to not having it). Autumn weather is setting in (my favorite season!) The Apocalypse is still yet to occur. Yes, I am indeed doing pretty well.

But a girl can still dream, right? You bet!

The imagination is one of the best things about being human (okay, I know that there are some of you out there who will think of all the exceptions to that statement...just go with me for a sec). But, anyways, when used well the imagination is the bomb-diggity. I use my imagination a lot, especially when it comes to decorating a room , scoping out and designing my next project, or trying to MacGyver some thing or other.

Today, I would like to invite you to take a tour with me through my dream house. Cooome alooong with meeee. Our tour starts in

Three.

Two.

One.

Welcome to my dream house! I am so glad that you could stop by today. I can't wait to show you around. Please, come in (yes, I am having an imaginary conversation...don't worry, totally normal).

This would be the foyer. It is done in a "Swedish Country" style. If you would, please, ignore the yellow bench. Because in my dream house, that would be replaced by this lovely bench. Complete with toile and all.

Yea for toile!

Now, we will go around the corner into the living/family room.

This room is oh-so-cozy. Please, imagine yourself sitting on that uber soft sofa, having a conversation with about...home decorating. When we get bored with that, we can walk across the room to the library...

..and look at some decorating books. There also will be other books, don't worry. So you can read about other things like psychology, philosophy, theology, political science, fiction, non-fiction...etc.



Going back in to the foyer and hallway, we will walk back to the kitchen. What do you see? Checkered floors!

The kitchen is in a rustic country style. I love the red accent cabinetry (in my real house, that window trim would not be red). The red with the black-and-white of the floor gives a cozy feel, I think. Perhaps I'd add a little throw rug in case I forget my slippers one morning. Oh, and maybe I would add a bit'o'wood polish to that table, looking a bit too rustic for me as is.

Now, I am always late, so this too would be fixated in my kitchen. With it, I most assuredly will never be late again.

Oh, also on the first floor there would be a dining room. the dining room would d have a wicked awesome chandelier made of Italian Christmas lights, wrapped around a wreath of branches.

Off of the dining room, there would be French doors leading back into the sun room.

Now, I probably would ditch the pallet wood and burlap table. And I would mostly elect to hang the mirror rather than just leaning it up against the wall. Why? Because, in all honesty, as much as I can like the look of a large mirror leaned against the wall, I can't seem to successfully pull off the look (or at least be satisfied with my attempts). So I know that I wouldn't have a mirror leaning against a wall in my dream home because I don't know how to do that. Oh, and please note, too, the Italian-Christmas lights that reappear in this room on the ceiling. Can you say "awesome"?

Down in the basement would be the laundry. My laundry room would be beautiful like this.

Since I clean my clothes when I do laundry, I prefer to do my laundry in a stylish environment to reflect how incredibly stylish of a dresser I am. That is why there would be a mirror (hanging on the wall) in the laundry room, so I can look at myself why I fold my underdrawers.

Across from the would be a little table booth. it would be very colorful--particularly with pink.

Why will this nook be in the basement? I most likely will end up married to a man who hates being overwhelmed with pink, I will relegate all of this glorious pinkness and frilliness to the basement because I will be so in love with him that I don't want him to drive him crazy. (I know, I am such a nice person).

Okay, back up the stairs, let's take a look at the rest of this dream house!

I cannot decide which of these two rooms would be my room and which would be the guestroom (or the children's room...actually I probably would need five children's room for the offensive number of kids I plan to have).


I like both of these rooms so much. the canopy set up of the first room is just dreamy. The bright and fresh colors are so relaxing too. The second room I find to be very cozy. Though there are the black accents, there is so much white (and a little gold) that it is not overwhelming. In fact, I find this room almost cozier than the first room. And those curtains are fabulous...Hmm, I think the second room would be my room. Which might be a good thing, because the black and white would much better match my jewelry box.

Oh, yay! Look at that jewelry box. For those of you who know me, I am sure you get a bit of a chuckle out of that jewelry storage, because you know how much I like my jewelry. (I admit, though, I would be slightly embarrassed if all of my jewelry filled this up. That might signal a problem...).

Last, but certainly not least, There would be an office area.

The office would be on the large side: Large enough for more than one person to work there at once, though only one person could get the desk. There would be the window nook with plenty of room to sit to read, work on a computer, take a nap, stare at whoever is at the desk...possibilities are endless, really. The nook is also large enough for multiple kiddos to occupy it. When they got bored of sitting there and whacking each other with the pillows, then they could practice piano.

Now THAT is a piano worth practicing on!! And I plan to practice upon it as well; there are few things in the world more magnificient than piano music.

Thank you so much for coming along with me on this little dream house tour!

(For links to all of the above pictures, please see my pinterest page. Thank you!)

Moderation is a virtue, Part II

If you read my last post, it may have become clear to you that I have a somewhat strong opinion about how, when and where to use toile fabric and patterns in a design palette.  But, what I said is just that: My opinion.  It is just a preference that I have regarding how I prefer and would advise others in using toile. If someone doesn't agree or follow what I have said, then I certainly wouldn't hold it against them or judge them as a terrible or misguided person. That is one of the grandest things about interior design, you truly can agree to disagree and there be no dire consequences (unless something like toile-overload induces someone's epileptic seizure, of course; or if you are insisting on a given design that simply isn't up to snuff according to federal regulations).

All that said, if my last post on toile made you re-think any previous preferences/use of toile and further led you to wonder how I like to have my toile...Never fear! I have plenty of thoughts on how I like to see toile appear in design palettes.

First, there are a lot of different types of toile to choose from. Some of my favorites include

Pastoral



Botanical

Using toile as wallpaper is the perfect example of where moderation is needed. Because it can quickly become overwhelming, you need to be careful of other colors and patterns you plan to include in the room. See exhibit A


Exhibit A

 Here, the homeowner has used toile in the bathroom as wallpaper as well as a chair slipcover. Now, what is interesting about this is that the wallpaper covers only the upper half of the wall, with board and batten on the lower. With the toile appearing only on the upper walls, this creates room for the designer to let the pattern reappear on the chair without it being too overwhelming. Also, because the toile is the only pattern that appears in the room, there is plenty of places that the eye may rest other than the toile. Though the green and white of the toile pattern reappear in the batten and board and the linens, chair and sink, these two colors create such a marked contrast to each other that everything balances out quite well.

Not everyone who chooses to use toile wallpaper will elect for only a half-wall use. Some people want it all and put it all of the walls.



This works for reasons similar to ones stated above. There are multiple places in the room that viewers can rest their eyes on: The white bedding, the molding, the side table and lamp. Another reason is that the room itself is small, thus there is less wall to be covered by toile. One thing that is important to note, is that you never, never, NEVER wallpaper the fifth wall: the ceiling. In the room above, if the ceiling was wallpapered as well with the toile, it would have been too overwhelming...like entering a cave of toile. The toile would seem as if to be closing in on you. Yikes. Yet, because this happy homeowner left the ceiling white and free of toile, the white ceiling draws the eyes upward and creates the illusion of the room being larger than it actually is.

For this next one, I will be very subjective

I am not a big fan of this room's use of toile. though they left the room's ceiling clean, being that the walls are so tall, and the toile pattern is repeating in curtains (and into the loft of the second floor) the toile again becomes too much for me to handle. When you have tall walls/rooms to wallpaper, if you want to go with a wall covering that is more than just a solid color (i.e. you don't just want to paint it), then I would encourage you to get creative. I really like how these folks went about toile-ing their walls:

Here they chose to cover one wall with wallpaper, and leave the others a solid color. If you know anything about toile, you'll know that it consists of a particular "scene" that is repeated through the print. If you look at the specific pattern of the toile featured above, you'll see that the scene is a rather large one. This means that scene repeats itself less frequently. The result is a calmer toile. Moreover, there is less need for art to appear on the wall because the print itself can function as art. Additionally, with the toil appearing on only one of the walls, the leaves more room for the designer to introduce more patterns and textures in the room, such as the vintage console table, the feather, the color red, the striped chair cushion. Because the blue shade of the toile is repeated in other places of the room (chair's trim, the towel, the hanging lamp, and whatever that blue thing is next to the chair), there is a very healthy balance.

Toile can also appear in accents throughout your room. For instance, a toile pillow

Pillows

is a great way to wake up a tired or boring sofa or chair.



Via

Personally, I am absolutely inspired by this homeowner's choice to use the toile curtain to hide away the pipes and toiletries under the bathroom sink. I just love it!



Via

Another fun way to use toile is in the form of wall art. I had really only ever seen this happen with the use of toile patterned china. I really like the look...so quaint yet so elegant.



Via





Via

 Then, as I was doing some research for this post, I happened upon this as well:


Via

 And I thought it was so awesome: framing and hanging toile on your walls! What a great solution to the too-much-toile-everywhere conundrum. Here, the toile lover can have it all: Toile on your walls. Toile on your windows. This homeowner has even got some toile for the furniture too in the form of the accent pillow on the arm chair. And why does this work? Because MODERATION was practiced!! Hooray!

Well, there you have it, here is how I like my toile.