Dining Room Dilemma

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday. It's at least in the top three, for sure. Although making dinner every night is beyond my capabilities, hosting this holiday feast is something I have volunteered for many times. 

This year we are headed elsewhere, but I am still thinking about my dining room. 

Specifically, I am thinking of the light fixture and floor covering. 

Here are a few images of what the space looks like:

Dining room from the kitchen


Dining room from the front door


Dining room from the den

I really love the light fixture that is there now. It's so unique to the era in which our house was built. However, it doesn't feel appropriate to a dining area or the mood I'm trying to create in there. You know what would fit, though?
 

One of those fake fancy lights from the 1970s or 1980s. I've done a bit of research on this style and it's actually quite high end and from Italy and ... mid-century! Who knew?!

I love thinking about the way the light would reflect off the black back wall if we had a light like this over the table. It would make me want to throw on a sequined evening gown to serve frozen fish sticks, elevating Taco Tuesday to the level of an event. Totally the way I want to live life.

The dilemma is that there is another option which my husband approves and that would also be fine, just not nearly so cool as THIS...

For the floor, we currently have a perfectly fine rug -- that I really don't love. It's a tad too small. I've angled the table and chairs to fit as well as they possibly can but it's a 5x7 and just not totally appropriate for the size of the table. A more suitable size would be an 8x10. I want to be able to pull the chairs out and still be on the rug. Is that so much to ask?

I've also been wanting to incorporate a sisal rug into my home design somewhere. This seems like as good a spot as any. There is this one, from IKEA, which I didn't even know was a thing until I read this post today (oh, if only an IKEA would open near my home, then I would know these things!!):

There is also this one which has silvery threads woven into it. It's lurex, which is defined as:

1. a type of yarn or fabric that incorporates a glittering metallic thread. 1940s: of unknown origin.

They are the same price and incredibly affordable for an 8x10 (only $150, although the lurex is on sale). I love that the origin is from the 1940s, which also fits the mid-century vibe of our home. 

When I think of designing mid-century modern for today's home, I don't want to be limited to sputniks and tulip tables (much as I love both those things). I want to do something fresh and fun. This room would sparkle, literally!


Here are a few more shots of the room via Instagram.


Detail on the bar: with more art / without a tray


Dining room full of people


And, since yesterday I wrote about my daughter's room re-do, here's a progress shot from this summer with the duvet cover on her bed and the new paint color.

Two Rugs

This is one of those "do as I say, not as I do" posts. 

Because...

The Rule: When decorating a bedroom, choose neutral bedding, preferably white. 

All-white bedding creates a soothing palette, which is perfect for getting a restful night's sleep. All-white bedding is the choice of fine hotels because it always looks good. No need to fear white; white can be bleached! 

This rule can work in ANY bedroom, even and maybe especially, a child's bedroom where the design grows with the child. 

The Reality: I bought my daughter this pretty duvet cover when she was five or six, and the above was her bedroom then. At the time, I loved the unique colors (aqua and rusty pink/dusty rose) as well as the sweet bird motif. The name (Anabel) also struck me since my daughter's name is Bela.  

This is what the room looked like when I decorated it for the spring 2015 One Room Challenge. In the photo above, I had folded the duvet at the end of the bed because I felt that the pattern never really worked with the daybed effect I was going for. Eventually, too, I found that it was difficult to make the aqua and rusty pink coordinate with other colors, especially the ones that my daughter is drawn to.

Fast forward 18 months and the headboard is long gone, the wallpaper has come painfully down, the walls have been painted light purple thanks to my BFF, and we now have this duvet cover. Pretty much nothing remains of that One Room Challenge...

This is why a civilized society needs rules, people! If I had just bought a simple white duvet cover in the first place, none of this would be an issue. Not only would I have saved myself a lot of money, but also the headache of trying to make.it.work. 

But, this post is not ultimately about how I broke my own rule -- twice. It's about what kind of rug to pair with the new duvet cover.

Here are today's options:

Rug #1 is a colorful shag from here. 

I love it first and foremost because it's a shag and would feel so soft underfoot. It also has the bohemian flair of the duvet cover with lots of geometric shapes so I think they pair well. I love all of the happy colors. Not only does the rug pick up the purples, yellows, and oranges that are in the duvet cover but also brings in the electric blue that my daughter loves but hasn't been incorporated into the new design. And because the background is white, the rug feels bright.
 

Rug #2 is from here and has a more traditional feel. I like it for that reason. The traditionalness of it grounds the bohemianness of the duvet cover, which I think can be a very good thing in a room. It feels more grown up. The colors work together. I think??? Like rug #1, it has the purple, orange, and yellow that are in the duvet cover but which are not as representative in my daughter's things. Coral and pink are already quite well-represented in the room so I didn't want to find a rug that highlighted those colors. The shapes and patterns on this rug feel more organic, which corresponds with the geometric shapes and lines on the duvet cover.

The floor in my daughter's room is hardwood that has not been maintained. Lately she has been asking for wall-to-wall carpeting like we have in our other bedrooms (the fourth bedroom is also hardwood but is currently being used as an exercise room/library). A rug is a less expensive choice than refinishing the hardwood, and will protect the hardwood if we choose to later refinish it. I'm also concerned that leaving the hardwood uncovered could result in a splinter or lead to damage that will be more difficult to repair in the future. 

Whether we will actually purchase a rug right now, though, is still to be determined, because she has a lot on her Christmas wish list. Although her decorating tastes have become more in line with her age, she still likes dolls and toys, for which I am very grateful. Let them stay little for as long as possible...

Fantasy Selves

Yo! So have you been wondering about the status of my novel for National November Writing Month???  Yeah, that's not happening.  :)  

I loved the idea of writing a story but not so much the actual writing. Over the years, I've let go of a lot of different aspects of my fantasy self, and it's like shedding a skin that didn't fit. There was the "me" that was going to become a morning runner. Or the "me" who was going to cook dinner every dang night. The "me" who was the ultimate classroom helper. 

This "me" who writes novels in her spare time? Pllleeease! Although it is sort of lovely that no matter how old I get or how tired I become of being anyone but myself, I can still dream new dreams. Maybe someday I will come home from a long, sweaty run where I feel as if I am flying through the streets of my darkened city in order to write pages and pages of words that make sense and flow beautifully. But not today (...or tomorrow or next week because I've got other s*#t to do.)

When I was researching "fantasy selves" for this post, I stumbled upon this post which led me to find this book. Fascinating! I love how interconnected fantasy selves and decluttering are.


Because hope is not lost. Just like Ike said, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." All those thoughts I had about a woman who gets her life in order by decluttering her home had a profound effect on the level of clutter in my own home. 

The English Room by Holly Phillips

I started in my daughter's room. She is a tiny maximalist whose mantra -- like Iris Apfel's -- is "More is more, less is a bore!" She pushed me to continue, though, even when I wanted to stop to rest. It was breathtaking! Five big bags of recycling, one HUGE bag of donations, and a few trash bags later, our house feels lighter. Again. For now. It's really a process and I'm learning that it's something I have to come back to every so often. 

Having recently read Design Mom: How To Live With Kids: Room By Room I was also a lot looser about some things that used to make me an uptight stressball. I let my daughter go nuts with washi tape and 3M hooks to make her walls look the way she wanted them to rather than my imperfect vision for her.


Along the same lines, I deactivated my Facebook account last week. It's the sort of thing that I would normally announce to everyone in my life using -- ba dum dumm -- Facebook, but that's not an option now. Anyhoo, I feel FREE without it. Truly liberated. Like there was a party in my pocket that I constantly needed to check in on and now I don't. Interestingly, the weekly theme of my favorite podcast this week is to "delete a soul-sucking app." I may go back to it once the addictiveness of it wears off, and then again, maybe I won't. 

I've been spending more time on Instagram and it's my modest goal to reach 500 followers. But then again, maybe not. With fewer followers, I can use my own voice and say what I want to say. Maybe that's a false choice? Maybe I can have tons of followers, oodles and oodles of followers, and yet somehow find a way to still be "me" -- the "me" who changes her mind and does one thing rather than another. The "me" who interprets and poeticizes and can't take a good selfie. Regardless, if you want to see photos of the refrigerator cabinet that I dreamed and my dad built or some of the decluttering progress, check it out.

From InStyle magazine via Copy Cat Chic

One last image to leave you with before I go: I am utterly obsessed with the green on these lamps. It feels so fresh with all of the airy, textural neutrals. And lately I'm crazy-obsessed with Moroccan wedding blanket-anything (like the pouf on the left). I think it's due to the sequins. 

What are you loving lately? DO you have a fantasy self you've shed, or still need to let go of?