Sometimes I think I have a problem, and sometimes I know I do. Here’s my issue du jour: retroactive shopping. After I buy things, I keep on shopping for the same (better?) things. My mania reaches fever pitch when I make major purchases. Case in point: after we bought a house I trolled the mls for MONTHS worried that a better house might pop up… it didn’t, and I felt all justified and vindicated in our mega sweet buy. But what if the most amazing house in the world had popped up? That’s just setting oneself up for disaster.

Anyway, know what I can’t stop looking at? Curtains. That’s right — I already bought some. But I want more.

Simple yellow with invisible tiebacks.

Pinch pleat with oversized rustic rod.

High contrast burgundy taffeta (burgundy is baaaccckkk).

Greigey violet matched to wall color with uber skinny brass rods… I die.

Nick Olsen shock of cobalt in a neutral room with punchy accents.

More Nick Olsen, this time he does those curtains up righteous. Ball fringe with matching tie backs!

Joe Nye super ballsy pattenered curtains and matching cornice.

Golden showers… with balls.

But no new curtains today. What I do need are some roman shades. I’m thinking of something like this for the nursery:

Anyone have a good but cheap source for custom roman shades? I just need plain fabric with a blackout lining. My sweet MIL can sew the ribbon trim on.

That’s all for today, folks. I have family in town so I’ll be on and off the computer, but I promise to frantically check your comments for golden shopping nuggets of wisdom.

[pinterest]

Apparently Austin has moved into a subtropical zone, one where we receive three inches of rain in 30 minutes almost daily. It’s been a relief for our drought ridden region, except I’m starting to wonder if the sun is ever going to return or if we’re doomed to live in a mushroom forest until the end of time. Point is, I’m getting stuff done around here but I can’t take pictures because it’s pitch dark.

For starters, Ike got a new (craigslist) big boy bed that Matt is painting a creamy sooty black:

Just try to stop yourself from loving that cute bed.

Also my bedding came in from Overstock so the master bedroom is looking less crappy every day, if maybe a bit sleazy… I don’t know. That’s my next photography project so look for updates in the next few days if the rain will ever stop. This may be a little OTT, though:

Giant faux fur blanket I know you aren’t for real, but I think I might could love you anyway… maybe.

Meanwhile, swing arm sconces and new pillows are in the works for the front room.

I took the plunge and sprang for a pair of these Kelly Wearstler/Lee Jofa pillows, and now I wish I’d also gotten a pomegranate velvet cover from the same seller:

Should I?

And hey, did you know that if you buy a pair of unshaded swing arm sconces at a thrift store, a cup harp is the proper lamp fitting to connect the sconce to a real (not Ikea or clip) shade?

It looks like this. Now you know.

Also the nursery is slowly inching towards completion. To that end, I sent this chair:

To be upholstered in this fabric:

Which I scored for $4/yd including tax and shipping. Shazam!

And finally I sucked it up and bought more wallpaper for the hallway and powder room. Maybe those rooms will get done before baby comes, maybe not. Last time I papered our hall myself, but this time I’m having someone else do it for a VERY reasonable price. I will give out his info after he’s done… I ain’t got time for poaching.

What does all this add up to? Poverty. I try really really really hard to buy vintage, to use local retailers and shop small business, but I still have the stain of filthy capitalism all over me right now.

When Ben gets the Amex statement he is going to insist on putting the kids to work as child models, or at least as diamond miners.

Can’t say I’m opposed to a little mining (and hopefully smuggling). Child modeling is way creepier.

ps, that was intended to be funny.

Later, dudes. The doctor is about to poke her fingers in my special no no to see when the baby might come out…

I need two more weeks. Legs and fingers crossed!

Interior photography should be an olympic sport. There would be the sofa lifting component, the squatting competition, and the tensed muscles/breath holding element. Also, extremely pregnant ladies should automatically get a blue ribbon. I’m telling you this because I threw my back out whilst attempting a living room photo shoot, ostensibly to show off my new curtains.

Why would I choose the hardest room to shoot, praytell? I think we’ve already established that I am not always the most rational being. Ok, and I don’t want to shoot the very nearly finished rooms until they’re as close to done as possible, because I’m weird like that.

Meanwhile, the living room is never going to be done. It’s huge, has a difficult layout, and is frequently inhabited by small people and their tiny but obnoxious plastic toys. Fixing this room will cost a zillion dollar billz — largely spent on new seating, rugs, upholstery, built ins, and custom curtains. Oh, and I would also like a pile of money to swim in like Scrooge McDuck.

Just because.

Enough excuses. On with the show.

Hey, look at that — I have new curtains.

They came from the West Elm outlet, $130 total for all four panels. They are silk. They are sheer. They are not overwhelming and I like that. I probably need to hang them higher but I’m not in any hurry to nag Ben into conquering that relatively piddly task.

Dear jeebus that chesterfield needs to get out of there… but it’s so comfortable. Like sitting on your grandma’s lap and listening to bedtime stories about the good old days, albeit with crumbs and jelly smeared all over your ass.

Here is the back end of the room that I never show because it’s sorely under utilized and generally functions as a crap repository. You can see the unpainted hallway in the background… it’s not papered because I may have miscalculated the amount of paper I need to cover the space. May = definitely.

Kind of embarrassing back wall. Someday the tv may go back here. Or not. Until then I am unwilling to invest more than a few bucks jazzing up this space. What do you think: New chair upholstery (it needs to be resprung anyway)? Or maybe paint the mirror? New lamps? Rug shakeup?

I don’t know. Blank slate. I’m not planning to spend a lot of time worrying about it. I wish I could paint that wall a crazy color, but it would be weird with the other stuff going on around that space.

And there you have it. I just made myself totally depressed.

I am trying to remind myself that the room looks ever so much better than it did when we moved in less than a year ago:

Hahaahaaaaaaaaaaa.

In other news, Ike’s room is totes cute but I might buy him a new bed… Also it is insanely dark in there until about 7:30, which is bedtime. Hence the lack of pictures that might make me feel better about myself.

Master bedroom is looking cozy but needs art and bedding. Hopefully these things will happen over the weekend.

Front room looking kinda awesome but needs pillows… I am eyeing these but so far have been too cheap to pull the trigger:

Baby nursery is finally coming along, but I now have an unopened roll of Thibaut’s Cheetah wallpaper to sell:

I kept trying to make it work in there, but it felt like hammering a square peg into a round hole. Let me know if you want to buy it and I’ll ship it to you.

And finally, all the onesies are washed and blankies are folded. So if Baby X decides to squirt out of ladytown any time soon I am “prepared.”

As if.

I do believe the weekend beat me 20 kinds of black and blue and now Monday is here to laugh in my face. On Saturday my baby boy turned THREE years old and I want to claw my eyes out just thinking about that. No more growing, kid. Also, no more birthday parties when I am 36 weeks pregnant and it’s 800 degrees outside.

But he was pretty excited about the mountain of presents he got, so we’ll call this one worth it.

The rest of the weekend we spent cleaning closets and preparing for the arrival of Number Two, who is growing so fast I frequently have to haul myself out of bed at 5am to eat more. Ugh.

Meanwhile, the house is shaping up (mostly). The front room is in danger of looking pretty good, so no pictures until I get a couple of finishing touches in there. I’ll try to take a survey of some other rooms todayish.

The baby nursery may be an utter failure, though. Not enough wallpaper, not sure about upholstery, custom blinds are stupid expensive… too whipped to fully discuss right now.

Ike is back at summer camp today. Off to make the most of my remaining three hours of freedom!

Today marks the second visit of the cleaning lady, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to mutiny when she sees how dirty this place has gotten in two weeks. Little does she know that my cat attracts leaves like velcro and paint in the sink is a state of being over here. But she might also notice that since the last time she was here, new curtains were boughten and the bedroom has been painted and my shelves for the front room are back, sporting a fresh coat of glossy paint.

Good things. Things that will appear in pictures soon. I promise.

Some bad things might have happened, too. Things like our fancy marble dining table arrived cracked down the middle. And I didn’t order enough wallpaper for the baby’s room. And I’m 99% sure I didn’t order enough wallpaper for the powder room, either… did someone say wallpaper calculator? Who? Wha?

I don’t know — maybe it’s the fact that I’m dead tired and HUGE, but I just don’t care anymore.

That’s why they call me mellow yellow…

today.

Tomorrow I will assuredly have a nervous breakdown since I’ve been with Ike all day all summer with no school, plus his birthday party is this Saturday and I haven’t prepped AT ALL.

Oh and the baby will be here in a month.

Mellow yellow, dudes.

Mellow.

[pinterest]

Last week I was experiencing a serious pressure related block up/meltdown, and pretty much as soon as I (you) gave me permission not to decide, I decided a whole bunch of decor related stuff. I also decided not to worry about the house so much anymore, mostly because I am now 35 weeks pregnant and I look like I swallowed a whale and I have a sad little waddle going on. Apparently a tiny human will be rocketing out of my hoohah in five weeks or less and I should maybe probably focus on preparing for that, too.

At least now Baby X won’t have to spend his first month or two of life staring up at a patchwork quilt of peachbluegraypurple paint samples in the master bedroom, because that shit is DONE.

Sadly this is not our bedroom, but the color is a very similar medium purple gray. I took the advice of Anita and Christian and revisted my sample of Dior Gray. Sanders gave me his blessing (because Sanders is a saint and is totally allowed to bestow such things upon mere mortals), so we did the deed and it is good.

Climaxxx!

I also ordered some desperately needed new bedding… old bedding may or may not have gotten caught in the painting crossfire.

In a reversal of my usual hatred for contrast, I’m planning to go mostly light and bright against the moody painted walls. Like so:

Because a basic white quilt and shams can be dressed up in so many ways.

Pretty, simple pillows and ikat blanket.

I might have ordered some coral sheets…

And a giant faux fur blanket to cover up our new quilt, because kids and cats (and lazy parents) are murder on white.

Details and pictures to come when I can stand long enough to take them.

In the meantime, let us bask in the glory of my decisiveness…

because it won’t last for long.

[Images via my bedroom files on pinterest]

Last night Ben sat me down and said something to the effect of, Honey — I think you have a  problem. Except that’s not exactly what he said, because husbands who call their wives Honey are kinda icky. Anyway, how dare he criticize my obsessive need to endlessly repaint swatches on the wall, my 800 trips to return failed curtains, my seeming inability to make a single decision on my own?

How dare he care about my happiness?

I must admit to getting a little caught up in timetables, in the hormonal rush of nesting on the clock. And like some commenters noted yesterday, rushing has definitely brought on mistakes — nothing catastrophic or terribly expensive yet, but mistakes nonetheless.

I also admit to enjoying decorating as a spectator sport. I LOVE showing you guys what I’m working on, but it’s pretty grueling to turn something out once a week. Or even once a month.

Add to this the fact that even the pros disagree on decorating “rules” (have you seen House Beautiful’s 101 Decorator Secrets? SO MANY of them directly contradict each other. Awesome!), and I find myself rudderless, aswim at sea. Too few parameters and too many variables.

I like order, dammit. Tidiness. Mathematical certainty, objective truth. That may seem a little weird for someone schooled in the arts, but I will remind you that photography is filled with mathematical formulae and sciencey stuff. I love the unbroken line of cause and effect. I struggle against the nihilism of anything goes.

Order. Symmetry. Complementary. Happy.

So I will busy myself with finding a way to work, because I do enjoy solving problems (and trust me — my patchwork paint swatched bedroom of horror IS a problem), but forgive me if my updates come a little fewer and further between.

Things will get done, but perhaps progress will happen on a more geologic scale.

Also I am tired and huge and the baby is punching my cervix 24/7.

That’ll slow a girl down, too.

Sorry for the quiet around here of late. Ike’s out of school again and I’ve been whipping us both into a frenzy of day trips and play dates. Today is dr. appt # 8million, so I don’t have a lot of time but I thought I’d report on what’s been going on around here.

A whole lot of painting, and none of it’s good.

You’re probably thinking: But, Erin — you have Sanders! Every paint color he picks must be magical!

It is. And yet sometimes I foolishly do not listen to him. Sometimes I chicken out and second guess him. Sometimes I am an idiot.

Now my bedroom looks like this:

Also Ben is pissed that I didn’t just use the extra gallon of dark gray navy paint from Ike’s room instead of trying to pick a new, slightly different dark blue paint.

Did I mention that I’m an idiot?

But you know, it’s hard picking colors for the last rooms in the house. The first ones go up pretty easily — limitless choices! And then the possibilities narrow into a handful of pathways… and then I get confused.

Should I repeat a color, or choose a new neutral color? Because I’m not sure I love the dark blue. And peach didn’t work (promise! and I did try Jumel Peachtone, aka orange sherbet, for the person who suggested it).

I am inspired by this trio of beautiful rooms:

This paint looks like Ike’s room color, BM Deep Secret.

This one looks like the front room paint color, Dark Harbor.

And this is the missing element. Kind of gray, kind of purple. Kind of amazing.

Could be BM Evening Gown.

Or perhaps Evening Skyline.

And my wild card pick is Arctic Seal.

So you can see I’m thinking something purpley, but not Violet Beauregardey. Something warm and enveloping or perhaps deep and mysterious.

Or maybe Sanders will tell me to do something else entirely, and I WILL LISTEN.

Details to follow.

Also, I may be getting a new rug for the bedroom. And possibly designing it and the paint color around these curtains that didn’t work for the living room:

Because, when the choices narrow down I try to make things more difficult by adding another level to the equation.

I can derive a polynomial function in my head faster than I can decorate (remember the shortcut, calculus nerds?).

But I am learning.

[photos via design traveller]

The nice cleaning lady is here for her inaugural visit… I think she was kind of scared when she looked at the floors. I am having some terrible guilt attacks about sitting here doing nothing, so I’m going to show you a bunch of mockups I did for our bedroom and then email bombed to Naomi last night. Now I look busy and important enough to have someone else doing my dirty work.

Our bedroom is currently a barfy shade of green khaki that must be stopped… we already painted the ceiling and now I must settle on a color to cover up the patchwork quilt of paint samples that is spreading up and down the walls like mildew.

I have been desperately trying to create a sunny peachy ivory oasis, kind of like this:

But our bedroom is too dark and unoasisey to make it happen. I think I have to go bolder. Cooler.

I could use the extra gallon of paint I have from Ike’s room, but would it be weird to use the same strong color in a master bedroom and a kid’s room?

Would the fact that the color is named “Deep Secret” make it even weirder?

I also have a sample of this greeny blue color, but I think the green may be too cloying. Not that I’m picky or anything.

Perhaps a cool purpley blue? I don’t know if I look good in this color, so my vanity may prevent this from happening.

I’m generally obsessed with this room. I already foisted it upon Jenny, who is having paint issues with her own bedroom:

But I’m also a little concerned that three cave rooms in one house is at least one too many.

However, our bedroom is pretty dark… we have one big bay window that faces south but it also faces the street. We live at the back of a culdesac so there’s not much traffic. But still, I don’t want the whole neighborhood watching our private business.

I’d prefer to keep that a deep secret.

So what do you guys think? Do you like any of the mockups? Suggestions for other non crazy colors?

I can’t handle uber coral or pink pizazz in the bedroom. I think I’d like to keep things in the green or blue range, for continuity’s sake.

If you have favorite paint colors, spill it.

Headed out to bother Sanders now.

He is so nice not to kill me.

No, I’m not talking about that 50 Shades of Drivel that seems to be spreading faster than a faux pandemic — like the bird flu or Y2K. I’m talking about my nascent need to add some cray cray custom upholstered masterpiece to my life. Something that will hold the viewer in thrall and command the scene. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that every room needs a little dominating.

Evidence:

 Apparently it has to be a large, insanely expensive item.

I am poor middle class and I can’t sew (a button, maybe?), therefore common sense dictates that I should tackle my wee little chairs first.

Baby steps. Baby dominatrix. That’s kind of skeevy.

Weather is being very uncooperative (rain in Austin? in summer???!), but I promise Ike’s room reveal will be up as soon as I can shoot it.

Honestly it’s good that I can’t do it today because I got about four hours of sleep last night worrying about the cleaning lady coming tomorrow… if I weren’t pregnant I’m pretty sure someone would prescribe horse tranquilizers for my anxiety.

Nesting ain’t no joke, y’all.

 [Pinterest sources for pics hereish, because it's summer and I'm lazy]

Still on a crazy fabric shopping binge. I’m currently in the market for some cheap cantilevered chairs that I can reupholster like these:

Perennials’ City Kitty ought to do. Plus it will repel milk and jelly. I’m hoping to have wood or cane backs and fabric seats only to do it myself and cut down on yardage… maybe 3 yardsish? I can do that.

It’s going to be awesome with my million dollar marble table, which I FINALLY ORDERED.

 It’s supposed to be here Thursday (!!!!!!!).

Also arriving Thursday is the newly hired cleaning lady, which I’m hoping will change my life. Sadly right now I’m just suffering from panic attacks about the Katrina like state of disaster in our house, and how much work it’s going to take to pick up before she can even clean.

I have seven weeks before my due date to get this house whipped into shape. Must solve curtain conundrum (blue velvet was not a winner), paint master bedroom (peach is not going well), wallpaper the nursery and the foyer, finish the front room and dinette areas.

So, you know, not much.

Also, I should probably wash some onesies or whatever.

Meanwhile, Ike’s room is done. Finished. Completeasaurus Rex.

Reveal coming this week… Stay tuned.

Thanks for all the comments about my curtain conundrum — especially the ones that said nice things about our house. It’s not where I want it to be, but hopefully it’s better than where it started. I mean, how could it possibly be worse than green carpet, khaki paint, and overstuffed mushroom farts furniture? I really had nowhere to go but up.

Anyhow, I ordered some more curtains that are going to blow your minds… maybe in a bad way. Or maybe not. That’s the problem with choosing fabric — it’s crazy hard unless you have tons of experience. Personally I’m hoping the brute force of trial and error builds experience, because there’s really no other excuse for my OCD behavioral tics.

Speaking of fabric, have you seen this?

I’m pretty sure Jesus flew down on a chariot driven by angels just so he could deposit this on my doorstep.

I’m really important like that.

So this handy chart tells me lots of things, things like I can’t afford to swath this chair:

In any of Perennials’ gorgeously soft and luxurious OUTDOOR fabrics, like this blue velvet that would be perfect in the nursery:

Or this slubby chenille faux bois that I’m kind of in love with… it’s not nearly as busy in real life.

But $80/yd (to the trade price) x 5 yards (according to my new chart) = $400 just for fabric. Not including overage. Not including upholstery labor. Sooooooo, no.

However maybe I could afford to use fancy fabric on this chair:

Because it only requires 2.5 yards.

Small pattern if I keep the buttons.

Bigger pattern if I don’t.

See how handy the chart is?

I’m kind of obsessed with finding furniture in my house and calculating the yardage.

I feel so empowered, even though I don’t know anything about sewing and fabrics and upholstery.

But I’m learning.

Happy Friday, y’alluns.

Verily I say unto thee, go forth and reupholster the world!

[Perennials Fabrics]