Two Bathrooms

After being in Christina Francisco's lovely home on vacation, I have been inspired to try harder at home decorating. My current room that I am working on is our bedroom. This has been especially hard, mostly because our bedroom is huge (15 by 20), and is used for two very different things: half is our bedroom, and the other half is David's office. So far, I'm not having much success. If anybody has any brilliant ideas, let me know!

However, I have had two exciting successes: two bathrooms.

This is our downstairs bathroom. It started white when we moved in, I painted it brown with darker brown sponging, and then 3 years later David and I painted it blue. The blue was starting to worry me, until I remembered that I could put things on the walls! David installed a new lighting fixture, and I went to work trying to figure out ways to fill up the walls. The first thing I did was these three fabric-covered panels. I love fabric, and I'll try anything to be able to decorate with it. I love the way these turned out, and they come with an added bonus: in a room with no carpet, they absorb a ton of sound!



My next idea was to use plates from Pier 1's clearance section to decorate the tall wall behind the toilet. After a few different attempts to affix them to the wall and a few broken plates, we finally got it right. I love the look, although David's not totally sold on it. The wall that you can't see I stenciled very lightly with this cool wallpaper-looking stencil (you'll see more of that in the next bathroom!)

I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and it's fun to have a sort of funky bathroom in the midst of my cream-and-white downstairs.

Moving on, we come to the upstairs bathroom, used by the kids. It also was white when we moved in (noticing a theme yet? why don't builders do something more interesting?). The upstairs loft that this bathroom comes out of is light green with a dark green accent wall. I used the same dark green paint, took the plunge, and painted a small room a dark color (something I'd always heard was a no-no.) I really liked it, but it stayed boring green for about 4 1/2 years--until Deb was here last week. She and I used the same wallpaper stencil in light green on the biggest wall. Then, I made her help me take pictures of the kids in the woods. It was not a very pleasant experience, between crying when I tried to get them to sit still and eating leaves and dirt, but I was able to get 2 shots of the kids having fun, and Deb got a few of me holding crying Laura. I used a cool website to turn them into old-looking black and white photographs, used cream cardstock to mat them, and put them in some super-cheap Bed, Bath, and Beyond frames I've had lying around forever. It turned out way better than I even dared to hope! I finished off with a trip to Sam's for sage green towels for the girls (who had been using baby towels), and it's done!


I love being in there now. It doesn't feel like it only belongs to kids, though they do have toys in the bathtub and a fish toothbrush holder. I love having pictures of us on the wall. And the kids think it's really funny. "Look Mom, that's me!"

I'm hoping that with a lot of thought, I can somehow turn our master into a place that I love also!

P.S.--That second bathroom doubles as our guest bath, and we'd love to have you come visit!